


The Gifts of Heaven

by Snowgrouse



Series: Of Roses Unfurling [25]
Category: Original Work, Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights
Genre: Adventure, Afterlife, Anal Sex, Androgynous male character, Animal Sacrifice, BBW, BDSM, Bath Sex, Bathing/Washing, Bathroom Sex, Bellydancing, Bibliophilia, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Blood, Bondage, Books, Breakups, Character(s) of Color, Comfort Sex, Contraceptive magic, Dancing, Dominant Male Character/Submissive Female Character, Erotica, F/F, F/M, Female Artisans, Feminist Themes, Ghosts, Heartbreak, Heavy Drinking, Held Down, Historical, Historical Accuracy, Historical Erotic Romance, Historical Inaccuracy, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Islamic mysticism, Jewellery, Light BDSM, Magic as sex aid, Magical Bondage, Middle Ages, Muslim characters, Nipple Clamps, Open Relationships, Other, Pagan Festivals, Pagan characters, Papermaking, Period Attitudes Towards Sexuality and Gender, Persia, Persian Mythology - Freeform, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Relationship Negotiation, Robot Sex, Romance, Sex Robots, Strong Female Characters, The Golden Age of Islam, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Vaginal Sex, Viking Characters, Voluptuousness, Winter Solstice, background incest, everyone is bi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25065811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: The heavens themselves resolve to bless Yassamin and Jaffar and strengthen their love. Yet the same cannot be said for Fadl and Zainab, the rift between whom but deepens due to a different kind of heavenly intervention. As Yassamin deserves a rest, Jaffar sets out for New Lesbos alone, hoping to help Zainab settle her score with Fadl once and for all.***To her astonishment, Yassamin can feel that Sarosh is, now, drawing her to himself by her heart: yes, as if upon invisible ribands that have been bound about her heart, ribands he clasps gently in his hand, pulling her to himself as if into a kiss. That pull, that self-same force that Jaffar exerts over her soul in life, indescribable in human words, a mystery that has always confounded her, left her feeling small and bewildered. For these ribands are woven not merely from the threads of erotic attraction, not merely from the gold of earthly love, but terrifyingly, from the firm skeins of Fate, too, their pull crushing in its inevitability: as if she had somehow known him for always, as if she had wanted him for always, and that he had been but waiting for her all her life, but waiting for the maiden Yassamin to ripen for his embrace.
Relationships: Fadl/Zainab (Thief of Bagdad), Jaffar (Thief of Bagdad)/Original Female Character(s), Jaffar/Fadl (Thief of Bagdad), Jaffar/Princess (Thief of Bagdad), Jaffar/Zainab (Thief of Bagdad), Minor or Background Relationship(s), OFC/OFC, OFC/OMC, Princess/Sexbot!Jaffar (Thief of Bagdad), Zainab/Lina (Thief of Bagdad)
Series: Of Roses Unfurling [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/25989
Comments: 14
Kudos: 8
Collections: Conrad Veidt





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part 25 of the Of Roses Unfurling series.Thanks to Mags_1975 for the idea of Jaffar and Yassamin making love while it snows outside, Lonemagpie for beta viewing the manip that illustrates said scene, NinaMadou for helping me get over a big plot knot, and to everyone else who's helped me out with this one. Enjoy!

_Here someone hidden whispered:_  
_“Pass beyond your tears_  
_and you will see_  
_the broken-hearted lovers_  
_are the lords in heaven.”_

\--Rumi (Hidden Music, tr. Kolin & Mafi)

***

**Winter**

**The outskirts of Samarkand**

***

"Order! I will have order in my house!" Zainab shouts from atop her horse in a cloud of frosting, billowing breath; swishing around herself with her riding cane, she attempts to whip the barking, leaping, steaming tumult of her hounds out of the way. 

"It's hardly your house," Fadl mutters under his breath as he struggles to rein in his horse, alarmed as it is by the chaos. 

Thankfully, Zainab cannot hear him, even if he is right; besides the lack of a roof over their heads, they are so far out into the forest they might not even _be_ on her estates any longer. In fact, even Fadl isn't quite sure where they are, exactly: even if they have ridden through these forests several times before, it's much harder for him to get his bearings when all the trees are bare, leafless. 

For this is the last hunt of the year, the last chance for sport before the terrain becomes too dangerous for vigorous riding, the earth too cold and hard to dig bear-pits into, the weather too chilly for comfort.

"There!" Zainab finally cries and gestures to her servants with her cane. "Come, can you not see it?" She looks around herself, ushering her huntswomen towards the pit her prey has fallen into, the dogs all barking around it in a sea of fiercely wagging tails and excitement. "See what kind of beast it is; hurry! And remember that if it's a boar, you _must_ bring him to me alive."

Fadl rolls his eyes heavenwards. _Disgusting,_ he thinks, and prays to the one true God that it is a hare or a deer in that pit instead. For it is nearly Midwinter, and he knows exactly why Zainab hopes to have caught a boar: they are the only kind of swine you can find in this part of the empire, even with her wealth and connections. Frankly, he does not even know _why_ he is accompanying her in such impure, pagan pursuits--

"Well _done!_ " Zainab cries as the huntresses, now dirty and rough and sweaty, lift a boar from the pit by its bound legs, one of the girls still holding a drugged sponge to its face. "Excellent work," she says and throws them hefty bags of money as they bundle up the boar and strap it onto a donkey's back. "I'll send you a singing-girl each tonight," she says with a wink.

Fadl snorts. Yet, as the huntresses but grin at him knowingly, he knows even his scorn is futile, wasted upon the members of this happy household. In fact, he is not a little jealous, knowing what experts Zainab's girls are in the erotic arts; servants they may be, but these three will nevertheless be having the time of their lives tonight.

Finally, Zainab turns her horse in Fadl's direction again; she clicks her tongue at him, as if summoning a dog. "And what of my prize sight-hound?" She glances at the huntswomen, now rewarding the dogs with potfuls of minced rabbit meat. "Perhaps a bite of rabbit would un-sour your face, too, my sweet?" She tilts her head, grinning. 

Fadl sighs and turns his horse to ride beside Zainab's. "It's only that I'm wondering _what_ exactly it is that you want me here for, if you know you can manage just as well with your girls. Surely there are easier ways for you to tease me, to humiliate me."

"Humiliate you?" Zainab blinks. "Really, Fadl, you can be such a paranoid creature sometimes. In fact, you are just like these little fellows," she says and looks at the hounds happily trotting beside her, their tongues lolling and their tails wagging, "so full of energy that when you don't get to run around and show off, you become miserable."

"Perceptive," Fadl mumbles.

"In fact--and this is the comedy and the tragedy of it," she draws a deep breath, "I asked you to come because I missed your company. Yes, vinegar-face, I missed your sparkling company. Because a shared joy is a joy doubled, and so on. I thought you'd make it all even more, well, entertaining."

"I am glad." Fadl tries to hide the smile that now begins to tug at his lips, but his moustache and goat-tuft give even that small movement away, magnifying it so that Zainab can definitely see his joy. 

She grins even more widely. "Oh, yes; perverse as it may be of me to take pleasure in such a temperamental beast as your good self. But you know I _do_ have something of a reputation."

"Indeed," Fadl murmurs, now only able to think about what he is _really_ here for: he barely listens as he stares at Zainab's enormous breasts spilling out of her low-cut vest. Even if she's clad in a young man's hunting garb--a soft red cap and a suit of brown and green leather from head to toe--she remains unmistakably female, the suit but emphasising her femininity. In fact, so enticingly do her breasts jiggle that Fadl nearly hits his head on an overhanging branch. He ducks it just in time, but--

Suddenly, a violent, fluttering, black and white _something_ hits his face; he cries out, lifting his hand to bat away whatever it is. A bird, he realises; as it flies off, he has to struggle to stay in his saddle as his horse, too, staggers back in fright. 

"Look!" Zainab laughs, pointing with her cane. "You're right; emeralds _are_ all the rage this year. Soon, that magpie is going to be the envy of the whole forest, I'll wager!"

"That son of a bitch nearly took my eye out!" Fadl barks, and only as he feels for his turban, does he realise what Zainab had meant about the emerald: indeed, the bird has flown off with his turban ornament. "You thieving bastard!" He shouts after the bird, shaking his fist. "I'm going to roast you, you and your entire family, and feed you to my dogs!"

Zainab is now biting her lip, urging her horse past Fadl so as to spare him the sight of her glee. "And you thought it was _I_ who wanted to humiliate you."

"That emerald was worth a fortune," he grumbles.

"Come, now. It is but a trinket to a Barmakid. Speaking of whom, I'm sure that if you asked your brother to find it with his crystal, you'd recover it soon enough."

"I suppose so," Fadl grumbles still, massaging his neck. "But really, as this robbery took place under your roof, as it were, I could sue you for compensation, you realise."

Zainab lets out a sparkling laugh, echoing in the leafless forest. "What kind of compensation do you have in mind, stallion mine?" she asks slyly over her shoulder.

"You'll find out," Fadl grins back. 

***

**The Blue House, Samarkand**

**The love chamber**

***

Jaffar awakens to a muffled whimper, to Yassamin pressing her ice-cold feet against his calves. 

_'...'m freezing,_ she mumbles telepathically.

 _Where are your socks?_ He mumbles back.

 _Nevermind my socks,_ she sighs into his mind and burrows underneath the blankets, curling up in his arms. 

She is so cold he can feel her shivering; even if he is too stiff and aching to move much, he nevertheless holds her in his arms, wrapping himself around her in body and spirit until they both doze off again. 

***

He awakens to whiteness. As he creaks open his eyes a little, he marvels at how this is a whiteness gentle, not one that stings the eyes: however, when he realises the true nature of this whiteness, his eyes open wide in astonishment.

"Good morning, my love," Yassamin whispers with a smile, standing beside the window.

And what a window! This is no longer the humble little opening that'd graced the eastern wall before, mere three feet across and shuttered with wooden panels: for now, Jaffar is looking at a window that reaches all the way from the floor to the ceiling, so wide it takes up nearly the entire wall. It looks as if it's made of glass, built of rows upon rows of crystal-clear panels each one about the size of a book, all set into a lattice of silver and lead. 

Magic, he realises, and the equally magical view that opens outside explains why Yassamin had gone to such trouble to create this window. The entire valley is covered in pure white snow, its brightness tempered only by the grey clouds hanging low in the sky; this gentle, vast whiteness stretches out for miles until it all melds into the blueness of the mountains on the horizon. Only the river, ordinarily silvern but now a dark grey, meandering towards the mountains, looks alive: everything else seems dormant, silent as if holding its breath.

"My God," Jaffar whispers in awe.

"Indeed, it was He who created the snow, not I," Yassamin whispers back, smiling. "Amazing, is it not? As for the window, I merely thought we deserved a better view," she says, clutching her robe tighter about her nightdress. 

Come to think of it, it's been a long time since he's seen that robe, she never having used it until now: made of green wool and lined with sable, she'd got it from a merchant on their way here, having been concerned by the stories of Samarkand getting snow on the colder years. Yet, this is the first time they have seen any, in all of their ten years here. It is a sight both beautiful and bewildering, the entire world now changed, as if made holy, blessed: and knowing how fast this will all disappear, this makes it all the more precious a sight. Indeed, it has to be the most beautiful snowfall of the handful Jaffar has seen in his lifetime--and that makes him wonder.

"Have you ever seen snow before, my love?" He has to ask, his voice still a reverent whisper. 

"No," she whispers back, gazing out into the valley. "I had heard of it, but never could I have imagined it to be so beautiful."

He laughs softly. "It is, especially when you don't have to tramp through it, let alone camp in it." But he doesn't wish to dwell on memories of Harun's campaigns against Byzantium, all those nights he and Fadl had to spend freezing in their tents; he resolves to keep his attention on the present, on his Yassamin. "How _did_ you manage to make it so windproof? Especially with so many panels?" 

She lets her hood fall to her back and comes to sit beside him in bed. "It's a structural pattern I'd been working on for a while, something that actually increases the surface strength of an object. It works not unlike a honeycomb, consisting of several little cells, as it were. For when you distribute the pressure across several small surfaces, instead of just one--"

"Oh, _that_ one," he says, clasps her hand and swiftly, takes her mouth with a kiss. _Engineer talk!_

 _You asked for it!_ She laughs into his mouth, pulling him down onto the bed while still kissing him, as happy as a little girl. 

_What about the children? Have they seen it yet?_ He speaks to her mind, much preferring kissing her to speaking out loud.

 _I may have cast a little sleeping spell,_ she says and turns to lie on top of him with a happy sigh, leaving no doubt as to why: he can feel she is much more awake than he himself is, her mood fragile, her desire high. On days like these, her mind is so sensitive that it is always best for her to spend several hours with him in private, to reserve a long time for lovemaking alone, so as to give her the strength to return to the tasks of mundane life once more. Already she had felt one of her melancholy moods creeping upon her last night, and that's why she had retreated with him into their love-chamber: the children and the rest of the household know not to disturb them until they themselves emerge through its door. _Besides, it's early yet,_ she continues. _The almanac tells me that in this kind of weather, the snow will remain until next morning at least: we will still have plenty of time to enjoy it with the little ones later on._

"You don't have to apologise for it, let alone make excuses for it," Jaffar says tenderly and caresses her hair from her face, looking deep into her eyes to reassure her. "Your sanity is more important, and your children will thank us for tending to it, too," he murmurs and gathers her into a tight embrace. "I'll make sure we will have enough time for wintry frolics with the children, even if I have to cast a spell myself."

"I know," she mumbles into his shoulder; he could easily create a pocket of cold air around the house to keep the snow on the ground for as long as he liked. "But you know how one feels guilty."

"Mmm. Only a bastard who hated his children wouldn't feel a twinge." He slaps his hands onto her buttocks. "But back to your plans, my love. As you've set the stage so carefully, I expect you have something specific in mind?"

She play-kicks with her feet, lifts her head and blows hair from her face. "I do indeed," she says and recites the womb-sealing spell with intent, adoring how it makes him beam. "But we should wash, first."

"I was going to suggest that," he sighs with relief, lifting her off himself a little--his bladder is fit to burst. 

She rolls off the bed and casts off her robe. "In fact, the washing was a part of my plan; I was thinking we could do that while enjoying the view at the same time. Do you remember that time you made an entire bathtub out of a bowl, so that we could bathe here?"

"I do indeed," he calls from the washing alcove. "But a moment."

She joins him to empty her bladder and her guts as well; she yelps as Jaffar uses the cleansing spell to perform the latter. "I'll never get used to that. Never!" 

He chuckles and turns his attention to the metal bowls hanging upon the tiled wall. "Which bowl do you want this time? Silver or copper?"

"Silver; the bath salts don't agree with the copper. Unless you were thinking of turning this into an alchemical experiment..."

"You've got some nerve to lecture me about alchemy, young lady!" he laughs and tickles her, kisses her until they are both breathless. "Silver it is. Come."

"You'll have to teach me the spell," she says as they clear the floor in front of the window, she piling soaps, salts, oils and ointments onto a little stool. "Does it use the same matter-expansion formula as the one for the mirror?"

"A variant of that, yes," Jaffar says as they both undress. "Listen carefully and you'll see where it's different."

She does, memorising each syllable, each tonal difference in the incantation as he slowly stretches the silver bowl, enlarging it so that it's big enough for two adults to bathe in. Indeed, this is a fairly simple spell, while conjuring up the water and heating it is a little more difficult; so difficult, in fact, that she has to help him, adding her voice to his so that they can fill up the bathtub more quickly. As one, they pour lilting, flowing syllables into the tub, conjuring water into it in a steaming swirl; finally, when the tub is almost full, Jaffar transports a bottle of rose oil from the depths of his study to add to the mixture. Yassamin keeps chanting as he mixes it into the hot water, Jaffar merely smiling at her shocked expression at his using such an expensive oil so liberally: yet it is not waste, as far as he is concerned, when it's used for healing. 

Finally, the tub is full and Yassamin is able to stop chanting; she raises an eyebrow at Jaffar as he sets down the near-empty bottle, but knows better than to argue with him when he sets out to so pamper them. And she has to admit that he is right: as they both slide into the hot water and the relaxing, utterly euphoriac fragrance of roses, she has to groan from the bottom of her belly at the pleasure. Nothing else matters, now, not the price of the oil or the passing of time or anything else: there is only this room, her and Jaffar, all of their senses pleasured by the beautiful view, the fragrant oil, the heat of the water and above all, the all-consuming, all-healing embrace of love. 

For a long while, they do not even wash, but lie spooned there in the hot water in each other's arms, watching as little snowflakes flutter down past the window, glittering in whatever few sunbeams manage to escape the clouds' dark might. 

It's so peaceful, so calm that later, she realises she must have fallen asleep there for a while, nestled in Jaffar's arms. She has been so tired, so overburdened and rushed for all of last week, trying to get in the last of the harvest, making pickles, jams and preserves and hanging up herbs to dry. And even after last night's lovemaking and them having slept peacefully for a long while, she finds there is still some weariness and pain left in her muscles: she only realises this now, because it's finally being dissolved by the rosewater and Jaffar's tender embrace. 

Slowly, slowly Jaffar draws her back into wakefulness and health by washing her hair, massaging her scalp with his long fingers, new fragrances joining the roses from the soaps and oils he uses to cleanse them both. Only when he begins to vigorously scrub her skin does she truly awaken, laughing and splashing with him, slipping as they rub each other clean with sponges. 

Finally, he makes the water vanish and replaces it not once, but twice, so as to thoroughly rinse them both; he must have conjured all of this up while she was sleeping. By now, their fingers are wrinkled and their skin scrubbed so clean they are flushed all over; yet neither wishes to leave the bath just yet. Yassamin feels hungry, but she decides to ignore that need in favour of a hunger much greater: she straddles Jaffar and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him and kissing him deep.

Jaffar but chuckles and pulls back, and soon enough, he has mumbled a rune and is holding up a piece of cheese in his fingers. "Open up."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't believe it." 

He shrugs and tosses the cheese into his own mouth instead. "Very well," he says with his mouth full.

"Oh, never mind. Give me some." 

"There's a good girl," he says and conjures up a plateful to float between them in the tub: a light breakfast of cheese and grapes and bread, as well as fresh buttermilk. He makes sure to feed them both with his own hands: he can hear she was about to scold him for getting crumbs into the water before he'd even dropped any, so he makes a point of guiding every piece of food into her mouth with his hand covered with a protective spell, like a magical napkin. He can also hear her scolding him for wasting his magical energies like this, to which he responds merely by tickling her again: only when she relents and consents to being fed does he stop teasing her. 

"Now," he says, moving aside the tray and making a point of cleansing his hands with a rune so as not to soil the water, "it seems you are still in need of some rubbing, mistress mine," he pulls her closer and tickles her cunny, "here. How many rubs do you think will be enough to exorcise the last of your woes?"

She sinks her fingers into his hair, luxuriating in the scented oils in his locks as she presses her forehead against his, as she straddles him once more. "You are the physician, you determine the cure," she purrs, adoring how she can feel his sex hardening against the swelling of hers. 

"Mmm," he says, kissing her slowly, sinking his hands into her hair in turn. "Your window gave me an idea," he murmurs and whispers yet another rune. "Stay very still... that's it."

She feels something moving behind herself, and tries to look around her shoulder. "What did you do?" 

"See for yourself," he says and lets her turn around. 

For now, he has stretched out the lip of the tub at her end, raised from it a silver sheet about four feet high and two feet wide. It's so clear, so well-polished that now one end of the tub has, effectively, become a large mirror in which they can see themselves reflected. 

"So I can watch you, my sweet," he purrs and takes her by the chin, adoring how her cunny clenches against his prick at the idea. "We haven't done this in a long while, now have we?" He murmurs against her lips, nipping at them gently, rutting up against her. "Watched just how prettily your flesh dances," he slaps his hands over her buttocks and claws at them, lifts them, hissing as he watches them rise out of the water, gleaming between the greed of his fingers. "How sweetly you quiver," he nips at her lips and pulls her towards himself again, rubbing up against her cunny, "when you get well and truly _fucked._ "

She wails into his mouth, her noises broken upon the wickedness of his grin; this but incites him and he guides her to sit upon his cock. "Go on, my love," he breathes onto her lips, shivering himself as she rocks herself onto him slowly, very slowly because of the water having washed some of her slickness off. Little noises tangle in his throat as he feels the friction, both her discomfort and his; already he is so joined with her he does not know which small pain comes from her cunny, which one from his prick. But thankfully, that pain is small indeed, and his caresses, her eagerness soon slicken her enough so that she can slide up and down upon him with ease.

Already it feels so wonderful for her, so wonderful. "I love you," she whimpers, half in tears from how good it feels; her forehead grinding against his, she takes her hand to her cunny and rubs, rubs. "I love you so much, so much, so much," she moans into his mouth, laps against his skin, burns against his body.

"You do the riding," he rasps, driven so mad from the wonder of the feeling, the sight: _and I will let you watch,_ he moans into her mind as he leans back in the tub, all of him shivering cold and hot with ecstasy as she continues her dance. Greedy, he even lowers the water level down to his thighs, just so that it can lap lovingly at her buttocks at every descent. And what buttocks! Oh, how he had missed this, he tells her telepathically as he adores her reflection in the mirror: he shivers all over in pleasure as he watches those round, white globes gleaming from the water, the fat of them rippling deliciously every time they land upon his thighs with a slap. 

All of this, he shows her, shows to her every drop of water and oil glimmering upon her back, her hair; the way her flesh quivers, trembles as she takes her pleasure of him, as he takes his pleasure of her. She howls into his shoulder as he parts her buttocks, exposing her anus to the mirror, seeing its pulsing between his fingers; she groans as she sees how swollen her cunny's lips are as they drag up his cock and then swallow him as they come down again, flushed and plump and fat. How thick his cock, how monstrous it always seems in comparison to the smallness of her cunny; the veins, the muscles of it so full and so hard, a pomegranate red to her cunny's peach and rose-petals that now devour it over and over.

"My love, my love," he meaows, his voice high, he now so dizzy from pleasure he cannot even look in the mirror any longer; "give it to me, give it to me," and she knows he means her pleasure, all of it, that he wants to be drenched in her love entire. "Please, my love, please--"

But she is already there, her hand flying on her clitoris, the water splashing everywhere, her cunny pulsing, spasming and pulling around his cock so hard she fears she is hurting him; he keens into her breasts as she rides him hard and fast, burning, her pleasure rising so high, so high--

And it is then that he pushes his fingers inside of her arse and she screams, screams as she both feels and sees him doing it, feels the smile upon his face and sees it all through his slitted eyes: two of his fingers sinking inside of her arse, his chuckle wicked against her shoulder. He closes his eyes and focuses upon but curling, but thrusting her pleasure out of her with the skill of his fingers; the snowflakes outside rise into a flurry, as white as the flurry of stars now dancing behind Yassamin's eyes. The hooking of his fingers, the rub of her hand, the head of his cock as deep inside of her cunny as it is possible for him to be: all of these sparks now meet inside of her body and she can no longer contain her pleasure, too small to contain all of this love, this joy. With a deep, euphoric cry she falls into release, falls onto him like the snow, cascades onto him wave after wave after wave in a flurry of pleasure-sparks, enclosing him in her ecstasy white, bright.

For a long, long while they lie there embracing in the water, their faces buried in each other's shoulders, their muscles lax, their breathing shallow and light. Outside, the snow billows, the wind and some of the wetter flakes tapping at the windowpanes now and then; they, too, light. Light, like the touch of his fingers upon her back; light, like the magical heat he still enwraps them in so that they don't have to move from this position, remaining so deeply joined they can no longer tell apart each other's thoughts.

But eventually, their muscles, their bones, their joints begin to complain; with pained groans, they extricate themselves, give themselves a last few rinses and leave the bath. Glowing with gratitude, with love, she rubs him dry with the softest of towels; he wraps it around them both and holds her close even in the cooking alcove, as he prepares for them a potful of mulled wine. Somehow, he manages to tuck them both into clean kaftans and digs out his own, also unused, winter cloak, too; wrapped up in all these layers, they curl up in bed underneath the blanket to sip their wine. 

Her head lolls against his shoulder; she snuffles into his velvets. "'m gonn' fall 'sleep 'gain 'f you're not care--careful," she slurs.

The furs on her robe tickle his nostrils; he pinches his nose at the last moment before the tickle erupts into a sneeze. "But you are no longer cold, are you?"

She makes a feeble attempt to shake her head. "Warm."

"Good," he says and wraps a velvet-covered arm around her, kissing her cheek. "Then, _as your physician,_ I suggest you make the most of it, and catch a little sleep while you still can. I promise to wake you up, so you won't oversleep. All right?"

"All--all 'ight, docto--" 

But she is asleep before she can finish the sentence: Jaffar would lie if he said he hadn't helped her sleep along with a little magic. He takes the glass from her hand and puts them both away, curling up with her: after using this much magic, he deserves a couple of hours' rest, too. With the last of his strength, he waves a hand at the clockwork crane in the corner, setting it to wake them both up after three hours have gone; when that is done, he pulls up the blankets, pulls down the hood of his robe and curls up around Yassamin, tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An illustration of Jaffar and Yassamin making love in the bathtub (very, _very_ unsafe for work) can be found [here.](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1029215)
> 
> Some doodles for this chapter: [Yassamin's window](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1385435), and another illustration of Jaffar and Yassamin making love in the bathtub [here](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1519569) (this hopefully makes it a bit clearer as to what shape Jaffar made that bathtub take).


	2. Chapter 2

***

**The Blue House**

**The harem rooftop**

***

"Run for your lives!" Anwar screams in delight, holding tightly onto his woolly hat as he runs from his sister's snowballs, ducking into safety behind a little snow wall he's built himself. 

For it is a veritable volley Salsabil now bombards him with, using a two-handed technique to pelt Anwar and the entire rooftop with the heap of snowballs she's prepared for the purpose. Anwar, not to be outdone, has prepared snowballs of his own to mount his defense: after he succeeds in knocking the hat off Salsabil's head, he celebrates with a little victory dance.

"Careful so you won't fall ove--" and it is at that that Yassamin herself slips and flies backwards, only to be caught by Zahra, just in time: always vigilant, Zahra had been watching the children with Sonbol, until Yassamin and Jaffar were rested enough to emerge onto the rooftop. 

"Thank you," Yassamin mumbles as Zahra helps her pick up the contents of the bundle she'd been carrying: at least the snow is so pure and soft that none of the pastries have been soiled, the nuts haven't been spilled and the jam-jars are still intact. 

Meanwhile, Jaffar has brought a little brazier, a foldable, perforated table and a samovar onto the rooftop, telling them a winter picnic is no picnic at all without tea and a korsi. Despite Yassamin's protestations about the korsi being meant for indoors use, he nevertheless busies himself lighting the brazier and arranging thick cushions and carpets all around it.

Even the children are soon lured from their games by the rich scent of toasted nuts, warm pastries, jam and tea. Even if they have never used a korsi before, they immediately pick up the idea from the adults, neatly tucking their legs underneath the thick quilt spread out over the table, underneath which sits the brazier. When everyone is snug and warm--Yassamin makes sure everyone has enough blankets and cloaks, and that no heat is escaping from underneath the korsi--Jaffar insists on serving tea himself, giving Sonbol an extra helping since he seems to be the coldest of them all, the oldest and thinnest member of the household as he is.

"Where's the watermelon?" Anwar asks with his mouth full of almonds and pistachios. 

"It's not midwinter yet," Salsabil rushes in to explain. "The watermelon has to be eaten on the night of the Solstice, otherwise the scorpion-repelling magic will have no effect. Remember?"

"Abu Dawud got stung by a scorpion even if he was a watermelon seller," Anwar replies, without looking at his sister as he helps himself to more nuts.

"Ah, but he had no faith," Jaffar says calmly as he pours himself another glass of tea. "Faith is the most important thing one must have, for any magic to work."

"How do you know?" Salsabil asks. "About Abu Dawud? He looked pious. We always saw him going to the big mosque, every Friday."

"Nevermind," Jaffar mumbles. 

"God knows best," Yassamin says. "The most important thing of all is that _you_ keep faith, my children; don't judge other people's faith until you have examined your own."

Salsabil, however, has been staring at Jaffar all this time, intently. "You saw him in your crystal, did you not, Father? After you sent him the theriac. He refused to drink it, didn't he? Because he didn't believe it was any good."

Jaffar glances at her from the corner of his eye. "Sometimes one sees too many things in them, crystals."

It is then that a piercing cry of despair interrupts their repast. 

"Abu Anwar!"

Sonbol springs to his feet, clutching his spear; all turn their heads towards the courtyard, the direction the noise is coming from. 

Amidst a cacophony of tinkling, chiming, huffing and puffing, the cry "Abu Anwar!" rings once more until finally, Zainab emerges onto the rooftop, nearly collapsing from the exertion. In a much calmer fashion, Lina follows in tow, wearing an apologetic expression; she is clearly somewhat embarrassed for Zainab having come to disturb them this way.

Immediately, Yassamin is on her feet, helping Zainab to sit by the korsi, the heat of whose blankets she declines, covered in sweat as she is. Still groaning in despair, Zainab throws Lina her ermine coat and hat, panting as she slumps over the table.

"Tea?" Yassamin offers.

"All right," Zainab croaks and accepts a glass, "but put some snow in it."

When she has finally caught her breath, Jaffar leans in with a plate of almond biscuits. "Well, then, my lady Zainab. What is it that you need me for?"

"It's Fadl," Zainab groans, deliberating between the biscuits. "And your crystal. If it weren't for that blasted old scroll, I--"

"Please, madam," Jaffar says, lifting his palms in a placating gesture. "Do start from the beginning."

Zainab bites into a biscuit and rolls her eyes. "Lima," she mumbles mid-munch and looks at Lina. "Youmh thell hem."

Still looking somewhat embarrassed, Lina tells them of what'd happened during the hunting trip, of the magpie that had stolen Fadl's turban ornament, and how a jest about compensation had suddenly turned into the most bitter, vicious of fights. "And now, unless we find his emerald brooch within forty days--by the Solstice, that is--he wants us to pay."

"Can you believe it?!" Zainab interrupts with an indignant cry. "The bastard found an old local law, according to which the host is, indeed, responsible for his guests' belongings, and owes compensation in case of theft."

"It's true," Salsabil interrupts, to everyone's surprise. "That _is_ a real law!" she explains, looking around at everybody. "But surely, Lady Zainab, the value of one emerald is nothing to someone as rich as you?"

"Forgive my daughter's manners, madam," Yassamin says, shaking her head. "She's had her head full of local history books lately."

"And in her spirit, she but takes after her mother," Jaffar says charmingly. "And it's well that she should ask: why, indeed, would such a sum be anything but paltry to the richest woman in the land?"

"You don't understand," Zainab mutters darkly, staring into her lap. "The victim of the theft is, according to this bizarre, barbaric law," she spits, "entitled to choose the form of his compensation. And you _know_ what Fadl is like. He could've chosen money, he could've chosen slaves, but because he is a rotten, no good son of a bitch--" and now, she breaks into tears, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

"He chose her sapphire brow-band," Lina finishes in Zainab's stead, rubbing her trembling back with a tender hand. "Precisely because he knew how important it is to her, how irreplaceable." 

Indeed, this brow-band is all but synonymous with Zainab herself: it is difficult to even imagine her without the familiar row of perfectly cut sapphire drops, set in silver, ornamenting her brow. Sapphires are an unusual sight in Persia to begin with, rare imports from Serendip as they are, only appearing now and then as ornaments upon the richest of the rich; emeralds, on the other hand, are easy to come by. As a matter of fact, they are being dug up in one of Zainab's mines this very moment, right outside the city. 

But, as Lina now tells them, Fadl had suddenly claimed that his brooch had had an immense sentimental value for him, having been a gift unto him from his mother: that the brooch held for him as great a personal value as that which Zainab placed upon her brow-band. Therefore, he'd said, any judge would consider the two ornaments equal in value.

"That's curious," Jaffar raises his eyebrow. "Because I don't remember such a brooch at all. Had Mother given him one when we were boys, he most certainly would have used every possible opportunity to show it off. Now, I remember our carnelian belts, remember his enormous pearl-drop earrings, remember some small emerald buttons here and there, but I do _not_ remember a great emerald brooch of any kind, turban ornament or otherwise."

"I knew it!" Zainab spits. 

Yassamin shakes her head. "That's petty, even for Fadl."

"A petty and spiteful a bastard, that's what he is!" Zainab cries. "It's not the emerald he is compensating for; only his vanity. He has lived too long among warriors, full as he is of pompous, masculine pride. That's what it is, I swear! I tell you, he genuinely thinks it an insult to his manhood that my household prospers entirely without men. Every time he sees how happy we are on our own, how happy I am without a husband to lord it over me, it cuts him to the bone. And thus, he comes up with these--these--"

"Futile, vain assaults to try and prove himself," Lina says and nods, "but the only thing he proves to the world is his own misery, his own littleness."

"Why do I love him?" Zainab asks, more of herself than anyone else, finally pulling her coat back on, tugging the blanket of the korsi over her legs. "I don't need him," she mutters and helps herself to some more biscuits. "I am not related to him, like you are, so I am not obligated to put up with him, at all. Then why do I endure him still? Oh, cruel Freyja, why?!"

 _Because you two are exactly the same,_ Yassamin thinks, so that only Jaffar can hear; _you, too, need someone to prove yourself against; he the most perfect example of that which you so boldly scorn, so proudly show off you can do without: Man._

"It is only because you, my proud lioness," Jaffar says gently and pours Zainab some more tea, "need a good, sturdy tree to sharpen your claws on, to mark as your territory. As for Fadl's futile, vain assaults, as Lina so well described them, I know them well; he tried to use me in the exact same manner when we were boys. Just like you, I represented to him the antithesis of what he thought manly; I was something he could contrast himself against, trying to make himself look stronger by painting me as a weakling."

"But you always won, Father," Anwar says, brightly. "With magic!"

"Exactly," Jaffar grins and ruffles Anwar's head. "And my magic, I expect, is exactly what has brought Lady Zainab here today. Is it not?"

"It is," Zainab says, the sparkle finally returning to her eyes. "I need us to look in that crystal of yours, or use a spell if you have one, to find that brooch before the forty days are over."

"And just in case we don't find it," Yassamin says, "we should make a replica, to pass it off as the original."

"Good thinking," Jaffar says. "You really couldn't have come at a more opportune time, my lady," Jaffar grins into his glass, his eyes now sparkling, too. "I _have_ been looking for a good challenge."

 _Yes, and if it allows you to best your brother, so much the better!_ Yassamin grins back at him.

"There _is_ something that worries me, however," Lina says, drumming her thigh with a spoon. "In that I feel that this is a little too easy. Surely, Fadl wants to win this game, but he also knows that we would come and see you, and that we'd have your magic at our disposal. Wouldn't he try to, somehow, make this more difficult for us?" She turns to Zainab. "Mistress, are we sure the magpie really _did_ take that brooch? And that Fadl isn't just hiding it in his pocket, or somewhere else where he thinks we'll never find it?"

Yassamin clasps her forehead and groans. "I can just see him, now: wandering in the forests, climbing up trees in search of it, trying to find it before we do," she rolls her eyes. "If he breaks his back, I am _not_ going to be the one nursing him back to health. I--"

There is a thumping sound and a muffled groan, as if let out through a great beak of a nose. 

All look at Jaffar, who is now pulling back from the samovar, blowing and shaking excess energy off his fingers. "There."

Indeed, in the mirror-smooth metal surface of the samovar, they can now see a faint image of Fadl, freshly fallen off a tree onto the ground, shaking snow from his head and swearing. 

"I just made sure he won't cheat," Jaffar says, breezily. "It's the same spell with which I prevent the cats from climbing our trees--try and climb higher than three feet, and you'll get a shock."

"Jaffar?" Zainab says, grinning at the still-grumbling, indignant Fadl stumbling in the snow, falling over once more due to his own blustering. "Do you know something?"

"Yes?" Jaffar asks, his eyes narrowing from wicked glee.

"I bloody love you, you magnificent bastard."


	3. Chapter 3

***

**The Blue House, Samarkand**

**The shabestan**

***

She need not feel guilty for staying home, she tells herself. _Samin, beloved mine, do not worry so much,_ she can hear Jaffar whispering behind her, rubbing her shoulders and kissing her head; just as he had done this morning, when he and the children had departed for New Lesbos to help Zainab find her magpie.

Thus, today, Yassamin has had the house all to herself, and soon enough, she had found herself in the shabestan, seeing if she could make herself useful by putting some finishing touches on their latest love-doll.

If you can call it being useful. For she is still too restless, still too desirous to remain detached enough for diligent work: particularly as Shahnaz, the maiden they'd built for maximum allure, is now exerting a great deal of that allure on Yassamin herself.

Indeed, never has Jaffar managed to mimic real human flesh and soft female skin as well as he has done with this particular doll Shahnaz sits there with her legs open, and as Yassamin leans in to paint the folds of her sex, she adores the ripples of fat upon her inner thighs, marvels at the delicate scattering of golden striae running across her hips, as if trails left by a lover's fingernails. 

_The veins of gold buried deep within the earth_  
_Are but the love-marks left by Hades_  
_Upon the earthen flesh of Persephone:_  
_Love-verses inscribed by golden nails_  
_Glowing with sap ichorn._

_Oh, to be embraced by my very own Hades, now!_ Yassamin sighs, squeezing her thighs tighter together, her cunny flushing as Shahnaz's does as she paints it with an imitation of glistening sap. Oh, what's the matter with her? Just yesterday, they'd made love, and she is still sore, to be sure; nevertheless, the ache for further joinings far overrides that of any discomfort. The fact that she is aroused by a mere girl-doll--the sort they manufacture by the dozen, their genitals such a familiar sight to her that they're no more arousing to her than seeing Mustafa lick his balls!--is proof that she is still far from sated.

Of course, what one cannot have is always the thing one yearns for the most, and so it is with her and her Jaffar. And she cannot bear it any longer: as her paintbrush slips and draws an ugly pink lash over Shahnaz's mound, she knows she cannot very well work in this state. Groaning with frustration, she cleans up the mess, clears away her paints and hoods Shahnaz upon her little cart, wheeling her back into her alcove.

It is then that she can feel there are eyes upon her.

There is somebody behind her, in the alcove opposite, watching her; this, she can swear. 

But djinn never venture this far down; that, Jaffar has made sure of with his spells. 

She shivers, yet not out of fear--no, no; this is a thrill stranger, not unlike that fear she had felt when entering Jaffar's bedchamber for the first time as a bride. It is a fear half desirous, that of the gazelle trembling before a pard, yet perversely curious of its own, inevitable devouring.

She takes a deep breath and turns around to face her follower, bracing herself against the wall behind her.

Sarosh.

Before her sits Sarosh, his covers fallen to the ground around him, Sarosh a silvern idol smiling at her in his nest of blue velvet.

"Jaffar!" Yassamin groans loudly, moaning oaths into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. "If this is your doing, it's _not_ funny in the slightest! You nearly frightened my soul out of me, you beast!"

Sarosh but keeps on smiling at her, his eyes half-closed, both pairs of his hands folded, as enigmatically calm--and as infuriatingly smug!--as a Buddha; as if he knows something she doesn't. 

This must be one of Jaffar's elaborate jests--why else would he have left Sarosh uncovered? For their dolls always have to be covered carefully in thick velvet, always have to remain safely in their alcoves, sealed within by spells: each one in its own magical bubble designed to keep its particular mechanisms from dust, from vermin, from all harm natural and supernatural. And no doll of theirs is more precious to Jaffar than his masterpiece, Sarosh: he is the prince of all their automatons, the only one whom Jaffar always maintains and improves with the latest and the best of materials, sparing no expense. He would never have left his dearestmost creation in a state like this, were there no good reason for it.

A reason such as his wife having been left alone in the house while still burning with passion, still aching in the heart and the soul and the cunny. Said wife having been, previously, terrified by Sarosh's all-too-lifelike skin tones--one of the very few times she and Jaffar had ever quarreled over anything--and having preferred his original silvern form. The very same silvern form that now sits before her, smirking just as insufferably as her dear husband, as if asking: _Come, my sweet; what's keeping you?_

Yassamin looks at Sarosh, then sighs at the ceiling. _I hate how well you know me,_ she thinks at Jaffar. _Although I cannot help but notice you've improved upon the hairline and the teeth,_ she smirks.

"It does feel a little odd to have such a _mane_ to caress," she laughs out loud as she leans in to greet Sarosh with a kiss, ruffling his rich hair, freeing it from its tie to fall over his shoulders. "But come, then, silver lover mine. Let us see what you have learned in the time we have been apart."

To be honest, she is even a little afraid of what new functions Jaffar must have programmed Sarosh with, pondering the possibilities as she carts him to the centre of the shabestan, as she lays a mattress for them on the dais they have previously used as his bed. Using ropes, pulleys, levers and a little magic, she raises him carefully onto the dais, into a sitting position. Even if she _could_ turn Sarosh on and merely ask him to climb onto the dais himself, she nevertheless wishes to wait: wait until she herself is ready.

For there is such a sweet thrill to her preparing a bed, preparing herself like this for love, a thrill a little sinful, even: for is this not what adulteresses feel like when they make ready a bedroom for a secret tryst? For as absurd as the idea is, as spell-protected as the shabestan is, she still feels as if she could be walked in on any moment and a scandal would erupt; that what she's doing is somehow immoral, criminal instead of a pleasure not only condoned by but _encouraged_ by her husband.

This fantasy of a secret affair titillates her so that she does not suppress it, instead spinning it on further, letting her imagination flow. _Let us see, then... why would I be having a tryst in the first place? Why would I have need of a lover?_ Soon, her imagination has concocted an entire alternative life-story for her, one where she is married to another--a man respectable but dull, a fool she feels no desire for. For is that not how it almost went, that she married a dullard of a prince? She shudders to think of it, of a decade trapped in a marriage with Ahmad, realising he could never love her the way she needed to be loved, finding out too late that she was never cut out for the tedious, strictly circumscribed life of a queen, trapped behind harem walls.

To think of it: that the passionate Yassamin she now knows herself to be, the Yassamin who has explored entire, vast worlds of love, sampled perversions that would make most women blanch--that she would have lain dormant for over a decade, lifeless, unknown. Until finally, Jaffar would have arrived to rescue her, to lift her out of her stagnation, to save her from her life of self-suffocation: Jaffar, awakening the passionate, grown woman within, so that from her living death, Yassamin the lover could be reborn. 

Yes, that is how it must be: she, the bold wanton, is now arranging for an assignation with her true love, Jaffar.

It is a crime for which the punishment could be death: yet, it is only in love that she is fully alive. Therefore, for this love, she is ready to risk all.

And only a fool would approach such a costly pleasure frivolously, without making sure she enjoys its every aspect to the fullest, sating all her senses: one would not die for something ordinary, dull, trivial.

Indeed, it would never do to arrive at such a tryst looking like she does, a weary housewife with her hair ruffled and in her work-clothes, stained with engine-grease. Thus, she withdraws into the washing alcove with a determination to make her toilette itself, and all of its sensual joys, a part of this night of love that may be her last. 

She cannot very well use the bath-house or call in her servants--how they would gossip!--but scrubs herself clean underneath the shower, using magic to blast her body with hot rosewater steam. In lieu of servants, she utilises two serving-maid automatons to wash and oil and braid her hair, to perfume her, to paint her hands and her feet with henna. With the delight of a little girl, she casts heating-runes over the henna to hasten the staining process; she bites her tongue in glee as the paste dries and cracks, revealing patterns as rich in colour as those left to set overnight. Jaffar's name is to be found there, of course, cleverly entwined within the curclicues of vines, irrevocably incriminating her, were they to be caught: but love scoffs at death, does it not?

She could cleanse her guts with spells, but insists on a real enema, also administered by one of the mechanical maids; magic, she uses only to take the warm water upwards, higher into her guts than usual. The nauseating way it lurches in her stomach only arouses her, perversely; tongues of heat lick at her cunny at the knowledge of just how deep Sarosh will soon be penetrating her, far deeper than a human being ever could. To be so completely claimed, taken, taken all over--that is the very nature of her Jaffar, she thinks, a sob tightening her throat. That he loves her so that even his human body, formidable as it is in its skill, is not enough for him, not enough to sate his hunger for her: that he should use all of his arts--mechanical and magical, spirit and automaton--to take her, to surround her thus and to penetrate her thus, so as to completely consume her within his love. This makes her swoon all over, drunk with his love: his love so poured upon her even when he is far away, his thoughts never having left her, enfolding her in his love.

***

She is trembling by the time she emerges from the washing alcove: nude, her skin made soft from creams of almonds and roses, her eyes shining with kohl, her lips plump and full with the gloss of pomegranate. Just as plump and as full and as glistening as her cunny, hot and heavy between her legs; so swollen is it from anticipation that she can feel it with every step she takes, even the impact of her feet upon the floor a series of delicious tremors through her sensitised flesh, curling sweetly in her womb.

Her earrings, bracelets, anklets chime loudly in her ears, too loudly for this underground chamber, the air thick with anticipation: for do such sins as these not necessitate silence? Even a little tinkle could give her away, so she pauses to take off her jewellery, all the while feeling as if the shadowed shape upon the dais were watching her. Just as Ishtar had to strip herself of her ornaments when she descended into the Underworld, she thinks--or is she now Persephone, descending to meet her Hades in the autumn, the only music, the only jewellery, the only garment about her the fall and rustle of dead leaves? She straightens herself and inhales deeply, inhales the scent of this man-made Underworld with its caves of brick and people of metal; and even if Sarosh is still asleep, still covered in shadows, she swears she can spy a little smile upon the corners of his silvern lips. Just like Jaffar's lips curl when he is asleep; just like the corners of his eyelids turn up sharp, feline.

And to her astonishment--is this but her own mind?--she can feel that Sarosh is, now, drawing her to himself by her heart: yes, as if upon invisible ribands that have been bound about her heart, ribands he clasps gently in his hand, pulling her to himself as if into a kiss. That pull, that self-same force that Jaffar exerts over her soul in life, indescribable in human words, a mystery that has always confounded her, left her feeling small and bewildered. For these ribands are woven not merely from the threads of erotic attraction, not merely from the gold of earthly love, but terrifyingly, from the firm skeins of Fate, too, their pull crushing in its inevitability: as if she had somehow known him for always, as if she had wanted him for always, and that he had been but waiting for her all her life, but waiting for the maiden Yassamin to ripen for his embrace. That all of her adventures, her foolish fantasies about pools and djinn were but childish fancies leading up to this, her true destiny at the side of Jaffar, son of Yahya: and not merely as his queen, not merely as his wife, but as the other half of his soul, as inseparable from him as his own heart, _for she is his heart._

Trembling still, she takes another deep breath and steps before the dais, gazing at Sarosh, the image of her Beloved who _is_ her Beloved. She flicks her hand to awaken him, smiles at him, just as she would smile at Jaffar at their love-chamber door.

"Good evening, my love."

With clicks and whirrs, Sarosh awakens into life, his eyes opening lazily, the lights around the dais flickering into flame, glancing off his high cheeks as his lips widen into an amorous smile.

"Good evening, mistress."

He seems so real that for a moment, she genuinely wonders if this is not Jaffar himself before her, playing another trick upon her: it would not be difficult for him to paint himself silvern with a glamour, to establish an illusion of four arms, at least for a little while. Long enough to tease her--and that, she could not bear; she is feeling far too vulnerable, now, having exposed herself so, not only in her body but in her heart. Right now, she feels she would die, were she being made a fool of; she lets her head fall to her chest, regretting that she'd had her hair braided up in a coronet atop her head, so that she cannot now hide behind its veil.

"Jaffar. Please tell me that this is not you," she murmurs. A foolish thing to say, she knows; but she cannot help it.

"It is not I, my love, and yet it is," Sarosh answers eloquently, warmly--and completely without a Persian accent, something Jaffar has never managed to eradicate in his own speech, even by magic.

"I was hoping you would say that," Yassamin says, lifting her gaze, a warm flush of relief spreading from her belly into the rest of her body. 

"I am glad," Sarosh smiles, raising an elegant right hand and beckoning to her, bowing a little. "How may I serve you tonight, mistress?"

She smiles back and climbs onto the dais, arranging herself to sit upon it cross-legged, facing him. "I think you already know, but never mind. I expect that if Jaffar knew I would come down here, he would also have read the rest of my thoughts, and... perhaps given you certain stories--plays, as it were--to enact with me. Is this not correct?"

Sarosh nods and rests his hands upon his lap once again, soft. "Indeed, mistress."

"Tell me."

"There were three. The first," he enumerates, raising one finger--she will _never_ get used to just how fluidly, how swiftly he moves!--"the first was of a mythological type, that of a goddess descending down into the Underworld to greet her beloved divine spouse. This comes with two alternative narratives for the mistress to choose from: either that of Hades and Persephone, or Ishtar and Tammuz."

She bursts out laughing, covering her mouth with her hand. "And the second?"

"This was of a king buying a new slave girl, inspecting her--and chastising her, should that provide necessary. This is a program with considerable force, adjusted to match whatever the mistress's mood called for, but avoiding true bruising."

She nods. "I am glad he took that into consideration." It would be useless for her to deny just how often she needs exactly that kind of love-play. "And the third?"

Now, Sarosh grins widely, more widely than Jaffar ever dares to in front of guests, she notices: this thanks to his perfect row of teeth, glistening in the firelight. "The third, my lady, concerned a death-defying tryst between two illicit lovers, a night of stolen embraces, all the more passionate for its illegality."

Yassamin glances up at the ceiling. "Did I mention I hate you?"

"But you do not hate me, Yassamin of Basra, do you?" Sarosh, suddenly close enough to kiss, caresses her cheek with one of his right hands. 

"I--"

But he has already taken her mouth in a kiss.

This kiss but makes her aware of just how aroused, how sensitised she truly is despite their little detour into laughter; as Sarosh sucks upon her tongue, it sends such a flash of heat into her hips that it _hurts_. His tongue, so hot and so quick; his mouth so firm and strong and eager in its taking of hers--oh, but it's wasted on but her mouth; indeed, she can think of a far better use for it.

She presses her hand onto Sarosh's chest, against the ticking, whirring of his mechanical heart; his sapphire eyes flash with mirth as he withdraws from the kiss, licking his lips lasciviously. "To hear is to obey, mistress," he grins, having heard her thoughts. "Please, but show to me your preferred position."

She cups his cheek with a smile. "Very well." 

She arranges great cushions behind her neck and shoulders, supporting them against an ornate wooden bedframe she now lifts out with a rune, making the dais not unlike the platform-cots in their garden. This because far too often, she and Jaffar have had to strain so as not to fall off due to the force of Sarosh's thrusts--again, she shivers in anticipation of their power as she leans back comfortably and spreads her legs, shivers more as the air of the shabestan kisses the wetness of her cunny.

"Please, Sarosh," she gestures to the locket he carries upon one of his left arms. "I have heard so much about the pleasure-ring that I would feel it for myself, if I may."

"Certainly, mistress," Sarosh says. 

He opens the locket and takes out a small object that's somewhere between a wide ring and a truncated cone in shape: made of Jaffar's special gum, it's about an inch long, not unlike a truncated funnel with the tip cut off. The hole at its tip is the size of an adult man's fingertip, and thus just wide enough to sit comfortably around a clitoris. This little cone, Sarosh now takes into his mouth, with a little click as the funnel's wider end slots into place over his teeth, the tip pointing out from between his lips. He cannot speak for it; yet, he bows to Yassamin, signalling he is ready to pleasure her as she sees fit.

Yassamin beckons to him playfully with a crook of her finger. "Come, then; let us see what its reputation stands upon." For Zainab had waxed lyrical on the effects of this attachment when she'd had a maid-doll use it; apparently it had driven her girls crazy from the need to be sodomi--

"Sarosh!" Yassamin screams as Sarosh lays his mouth onto her cunny, sucking her clitoris into the little funnel. 

She jerks, but doesn't tell him to stop; her cunny pulses, flutters from the strange, mechanical sucking sensation upon her clitoris. This is not completely unlike those times a lover has sucked her cunny, yet it's a sensation decidedly different from a lover's mouth: for the funnel-ring sits so evenly, so symmetrically around her clitoris, soft and firm at the same time, its suction perfectly even, too. There is none of the hardness of teeth, thank heavens; yet the gum is firm enough to feel wonderful as the ring presses around the clitoris, pulling back its hood.

Curious, she gives Sarosh permission to continue; immediately, he begins a rhythmical sucking movement accompanied by powerful vibrations, at once so intense that she does not know if it's wonderful or torture or both; she cries out, her hips tensing, lifting, bucking towards Sarosh's mouth. Suck, suck, suck; the vibrations course through her body hard and fast, instantly awakening her every atom, her blood rushing through her a river of sparks, wild. God, God, it feels so strange, yet her cunny clenches violently, painfully, her hips aching with hot, tingling blood; her arousal just this side of painful, she already knows what Zainab had meant about the desperation to be taken. For the pleasure-ache, the violent clench of her muscles feels awful when there is nothing for her cunny to squeeze around; the ache is so deep, making her hips feel so hollow that she wishes she were being sodomised, too: that's how desperate she is to be filled. Two cocks would barely be enough for her, now; she has become all cunny, all arse, all burning, throbbing need. 

That she should feel like this after but a few short moments! Oh, no, no; she must not give up on this yet: she must bear it, must know more of this toy before she abandons it in favour of harder takings. She groans and tosses there, all of her rushing towards Sarosh's mouth, as if all of her flesh and blood were peaking in her cunny, pushing, lifting, surging outwards--not unlike those times she'd possessed a prick in erection. Panting, she claws at the cushions, at the mattress, asking Sarosh to slow down; for this way, she can undulate her hips towards his mouth, to meet each one of his sucks with a thrust, then withdraw with a sweet shudder through her hips.

But the pressure is too much, too much; with a despairing howl, she asks for Sarosh's fingers. His fingers, so that he will not have to give up on sucking her clitoris as he takes her cunny--

Yet Sarosh pulls back, all of a sudden; just as a scream of indignation begins to burst out of Yassamin's throat, Sarosh quickly claps one of his hands onto her mouth, takes the funnel from his mouth and leans over her with a leer, the very image of Jaffar whenever he has dared take her in public. 

"Hush, my sweet," he croons, "they'll _hear!_ "

Her eyes fly wide as with a flourish, he twirls the funnel in one of his right hands; with a click, it attaches itself to his fingertips. This hand, he now slips between her legs and presses the funnel around her clitoris again, and the funnel begins to suck and vibrate once more. She screams into his hand, screams out in astonished delight, outright convulsing as the waves of the funnel, and now Sarosh himself, too, begin to move into her, he slowly rocking his cock inside of her cunny. Easily, his free hands spread her swollen folds and guide his cock inside; easily, her body welcomes his silver coolness into its heat, she shivering as her cunny drips down between her buttocks, overflowing with sap.

With each, excruciatingly slow thrust he presses more and more nectar out of her, the living metal of his prick immediately transforming its shape to meet the curves of her body perfectly, seeking out her sensitivemost spots, so as to massage them all at once. Again, she shivers at the unnaturalness of being penetrated thus, as if three men were taking her cunny at once: the glans of Sarosh's prick turns and curves downwards, towards the very back of her sex, now shaped like the head of a cock taking her from behind. The middle of his shaft curves upwards just behind her clitoris, pressing gently into the soft and sensitive flesh there, making her trickle over his pudendum; the root of his cock swells with small ridges to rut at that agonising ache at the mouth of her sex that begs, begs, begs to be rubbed hard, stretched, taken.

"That's it, my sweet, my sweet," Sarosh coos in that disgusting lisp of Jaffar's that so infuriates her and heats her; "scream into this, my pretty," he purrs and presses his hand harder against her mouth, thrusting, pounding, fucking her; "that's it, that's _it,_ my wanton sweet, sweet." 

And louder, she screams, helpless as Sarosh pins her arms into the mattress, far more firmly and strongly than a real man ever could; she sobs from the perfection of it, surrendering utterly to this silver extension of her Beloved's might. Oh, how widely Jaffar would grin upon seeing this, his hand slick upon his prick; how he would delight in how her breasts and thighs now judder from his silver twin's thrusts--oh, already it's enough to undo her. Her release crashes through her body, she convulsing so wildly even Sarosh creaks a little; her sweat-wet thighs clutch at his silver flanks, slipping upon the metal. It is a climax hard and sharp and fast, over quickly, so quickly she knows it for but the herald of a vaster one to come; she keens into Sarosh's hand, into his piercing sapphire stare, howls at her own impalement; molten, flowing, volcanic inside and yet held so utterly still, still.

And still she remains, still as Sarosh now cups her cheek and kisses her tenderly, open-mouthed, his tongue warm and sinuous and slick; warm and sinuous and slick, his prick keeps moving in and out of her as he himself remains unmoving. _More;_ she cries out a plea for _more,_ her howl rippling down his silver throat, echoing in his silver chest. Laughing, he returns her breath to her with a purr tigrine, then turns her around, arranges her onto her belly, always remaining inside of her; he takes the funnel off his fingers, slips his lower hands beneath her and arranges them so that her cunny is pressing onto his clasped hands, the same way she herself always rides them when taken. Her own hands she spreads out upon the cushions, a sigh of joy bursting out of her as Sarosh's upper hands pin her arms down once again.

Yet this time, his entire body follows, his entire weight pressing her into the mattress; she cannot even sob, can barely breathe as Sarosh grinds into her with his entire weight, taking her with it. For a delirious moment, she fears he will well and truly impale her, so deep does his cock now sink into the back of her cunny, a sensation at first painful, even; until his cock transforms itself once again, shaping itself to follow the curves of her body. A slithering, restless flicker against the back of her womb, and now, a slow rocking movement, slow, slow; Sarosh remains completely still as only his cock keeps thrusting, moving inside of her in a steady rhythm. Now, it's only his prick and the flesh of her cunny, her hips that keep moving, rippling, her clitoris pressed into the heels of his hands on every thrust; each thrust eerily perfect as it hits just the right nerve clusters, striking pleasure-sparks from her with every blow, sparks like flint struck within the darkness of her flesh.

And the sparks fly high, turn into a conflagration, a new orgasm flashing through her, her screams feeding yet higher the flames; a woman made of fire, of illicit passion's heat, she is become an oblation to Love, her Beloved. For now, as Sarosh slides out of her cunny and begins to slip inside of her arse, it is no longer a man of silver now taking her, no, no; to her, it is _Jaffar himself_ now flickering, slithering, leaping through her. It's Jaffar who now finds his way inside of her arse, sliding in easily past her body's resistance, as he always has done; Jaffar who makes her hair stand on end and her skin prickle with gooseflesh; Jaffar who now licks up sweat from the dip of her spine. She is past sobbing, she is past screaming, her cunny spraying Sarosh's hands every time he drives his perfection into her guts; perfection as the sparks turn into lightning bolts, striking up her spine. She is tossed, jerking from the force of this new release--third? Fourth? Fifth? even as she is clutched thus, held still thus, only her mind still pouring out a sob-litany of _Oh, my Beloved, Oh, my Beloved, Jaffar, Jaffar, oh._

"Hush, my sweet;" Sarosh's hands feather-soft upon her cold-sweat cheek, brushing aside stray locks of hair. "So sweet, so delicious, so sweet," he chuckles warmly in her ear, bathing her in the pleasure her body gives him. 

For now, indeed, her mind receives from him simple sensations--yes, she can feel him sending her _thoughts!_ \--crudely crafted thoughts, to be sure, yet heart-melting in their earnestness. That Jaffar should have programmed even this into him, knowing how much pleasure she derives from _his_ pleasure in her--oh, but it slays her, just as she thought she was already slain, incinerated, ashes! 

Even as Sarosh now gives unto her what Jaffar cannot, that nauseating, yet perfect sensation of being buried deeper in her guts than Jaffar ever has been, he pours Jaffar's love of her into her, just as he pours into her that warm oil that serves as his seed. He even sobs, yes, sobs as he so ejaculates into her body's depths, her chest aching even as her stomach lurches from being so filled; sweetly, naturally, easily she flows out in orgasm in time with Sarosh's, their fluids now combining, trickling out of her as he moves into her, using his entire body for these last thrusts. In perfect imitaton of his twin, Sarosh curls, shudders atop her, his silver muscles rippling, he letting out deep, terrible bellows as he comes; clasping her as if he were drowning, he hangs onto her as he drives his last into her, finally resting his full weight on top of her. Even his fingers twitch, his hands trembling as he releases his grip upon her, lacing his cunny-wet fingers with hers; sweetly, he sighs into her mouth as with his free hands, he gathers her into a soft kiss.

 _Jaffar, Jaffar, Jaffar,_ she laughs inside, mad, mad; her soul is still whirling a dervish, spinning feather-light in the wind of her love-ecstasy. _How is it that you can so take me, so claim me even when it is but I alone, but I making love to myself, with but your silvern image?_

 _It is because you are I, my Beloved,_ he smiles at her in her mind's eye, his whisper echoing love through her even as she slowly falls, floats into the sweetest, richest of sleeps; _I am you and you are I and one are you and we._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some (NSFW) doodles, [here](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1543438): Zainab and Lina in their winter coats, and Yassamin approaching Sarosh with trepidation.


	4. Chapter 4

***

**New Lesbos**

**The outskirts of Samarkand**

***

"And this," Zainab demonstrates with a flourish, "is the _scriptorium,_ as the Romans would call it." 

Glowing with pride, she steps to the side as Jaffar, Salsabil and Anwar enter through the doorway. Very few people have ever been allowed to visit New Lesbos to tell of its secrets, and even they have been, for the most part, women: besides Fadl, Jaffar is the only fully intact adult male ever to have entered this city of women. Or at least that's what Zainab has implied, between friendly jibes of "you Barmakids being half female in the first place." 

But today, it is Salsabil and Anwar thanks to whom Zainab is now giving them a tour of her palace complex; once Lina had mentioned books were made at New Lesbos, the little bibliophiles had pleaded, cajoled and demanded Zainab to show them how this was done.

And it is with wide-eyed wonder that the children now take in the huge, bright, airy room with its large windows and its strange machines sitting underneath its vaulted ceilings. Everywhere there are low desks piled with paper, and at the desks sit the most beautiful of women, all silk-draped and bejewelled, busy creating books. With paper and leather, needle and thread, paints and glues, with all kinds of instruments they write, illustrate and bind books with deft, experienced hands, barely taking notice of the visitors but for a quick whisper in an ear or a stray smiling glance before bending to their tasks once more. They seem in love with their work, as if a harem of princesses enspelled by a sorceress to do her bidding; yet, as the children already know, knowledge and art are, in and of themselves, magical enough to inspire such love and devotion.

Both Salsabil and Anwar seem fit to burst from their excitement; both are trembling like Zainab's hounds, looking around themselves restlessly, desperate for permission to look closer.

Zainab laughs warmly and raises a tinkling hand. "Lina," she cries out in the direction of one of the machines, "show them how it's done."

Lina emerges from behind the heavy stacks of wood and metal that comprise the papermaking press, wiping her hands on a rag, acknowledging the visitors with a cheerful bow. "With pleasure, mistress." She tosses the rag aside and gestures to the children. "This way, little ones," she says and walks around the great machine, grasping one of its long metal levers. "Now, this press is crucial for the quality of the sheets; as you know, they have to be very smooth so that one can write, let alone paint onto them..."

"Takes me back to the old days," Jaffar murmurs to Zainab, grinning as the children climb all over the machinery, eager to try papermaking themselves.

"I know, I know," Zainab says. "It was the _Barmakids_ who got the secret of papermaking from the Chinese, three generations ago," she rattles off, "and the _Barmakids_ who established the first paper mills here and in Baghdad; the _Barmakids_ who were responsible for all those libraries, and so on and so on."

"I see Fadl has been boasting about it," Jaffar chuckles.

"To put it mildly," Zainab winces. "But I am grateful that he and Mohammad helped Lina take over the paper mill; now we can make our own instead of having to buy it."

"Speaking of Mohammad," Jaffar says as he and Zainab begin to stroll through the scriptorium, he with his hands clasped behind his back, flicking his own buttocks with his fingertips.

"What about him?"

"Well," Jaffar says and bounces on his toes, admiring the astrological frescoes on the ceiling; "you _do_ know that if you took this whole matter of 'compensation' to Mohammad as a legal case, he would rule in your favour?" He glances down and smiles at Zainab. "Fadl bullied him as a boy, so he would leap at any chance to take him down a peg. Were you to bring your matter to him, he would laugh in Fadl's face, and Fadl would never have the nerve to show his face at Afrasiyab again."

Zainab sighs. "I suppose so. But it's the principle of the thing, you see. Just as this whole mess is a matter of principle to Fadl. I would rather outwit him myself, you see."

Jaffar raises his eyebrow. "You'd better prepare your jewellers, madam. It is a big forest."

Zainab flashes him a glare. "He would be able to recognise a replica."

"Not if I cast a glamour upon it."

Zainab groans. "I want the original and that's that; if only to shove it _personally_ down his throat!" She clenches her little hands into fists so powerfully her bracelets rattle; her eyes flash with Hyperborean ice. "Come, Barmakid; you would not be here were you not tempted by the challenge to beat your brother at his own game. You would not have come here simply to cheat."

"Oh, I don't know," Jaffar says and peers over the head of an illustrator as she carefully paints a tiger with delicate strokes, using but one cat's whisker as a brush. "I could have come here to study the art of miniature," he says flippantly. "Or to educate my children."

Zainab's mouth curls in a wicked grin. "You're thinking of it, aren't you? Plotting. Planning. I can practically _hear_ the cogs turning in your head."

"Oh, no; I think that's Lina's press," he tilts his head, still pretending to watch the illustrator, biting his lip so as not to laugh. 

Zainab crosses her arms over her chest and spreads her feet into a determined stance. "I would hear that plan."

"May I?" Jaffar asks, but he has already slipped in to sit beside the illustrator, ignoring her fierce glare. "Thank you," he says and takes a spare sheet of paper and one of her pens, twirling it in his fingers. 

"I think it's time for some tea, Durga," Zainab says to the illustrator, exchanging meaningful glances with her. "Don't you think so, too?" 

Durga takes the hint and swiftly, collects her work-in-progress and removes it to a safe distance, several desks away.

As Zainab takes a seat beside Jaffar, he begins to draw a grid of sorts onto the paper. "This box here represents the forest. I propose that we divide the area into squares, like this; then, as before, we install a talisman in each area."

"And connect each talisman to a mirror or crystal, through which we can keep an eye the area," Zainab nods. "But it was people we were watching before; this time, our suspect is a bird. Are you truly suggesting we are to climb into all these trees to install each talisman?"

Jaffar taps his lower lip with the pen. "I'm afraid we have no choice."

"Come, now, master engineer! You can create flying horses. Why not mechanical birds to patrol the area, to save us the trouble?"

Jaffar frowns. "I thought of that, but it might take a long time. Weeks, perhaps--if I had the materials on hand, which I don't, right now. You yourself know how difficult it is to acquire metals during the winter, my lady. I only have enough for a handful of talismans, right now--the only other option would be to melt down existing automatons, and I rather wouldn't."

Zainab sighs. "I see. But perhaps we only need a few talismans; you'd think that they themselves would attract magpies."

Jaffar turns around, his eyes wide; he drops his pen and grabs Zainab by the shoulders. "By God, that's a brilliant idea!" he exclaims. "A magpie trap! A magpie trap made of metals and jewels is exactly what we need! Oh, I could kiss you!" and he does, dropping a big wet kiss straight upon Zainab's mouth.

There's a series of gasps and the sound of shattering glass; the entire room falls silent.

Zainab sputters and pushes Jaffar away, thumping his chest with her fists. "I should have you whipped!"

"You do know how to drive a man wild," he drawls, grabbing her by the wrists. "But, come," he says and lets go. "Back to the plan. Surely, you possess all the materials we need for this trap?" he glances around himself, at the women's heavily embroidered, beaded and bejewelled veils and colourful ornaments. "Just adorn a tree just as you would one of your girls, have her glittering in the sunshine, and before you know it," he crosses his hands and mimics a flying bird, fluttering his hands about, "our thief will come to court it, dizzied from love!"

"And then what?"

Jaffar spreads his hands. "Simple. We make the most attractive ornaments into talismans, connecting them with our crystal, and as our thief carries them off in his beak, he will himself show us the way to his nest. Which is, hopefully, where we will find Fadl's emerald, too."

"Unless our trap is so attractive it will turn into a pilgrimage site, attracting every magpie in the land," Zainab sighs.

Jaffar picks up the pen again and draws a circle around the grid. "I will erect a magical barrier around the forest, don't worry. That should limit the amount of our suspects to but a handful of magpies." Swiftly, he doodles a tree in the middle of the grid, sprinkling some of Durga's gold dust over it and blows it away, leaving the tree sparkling with gold. "Soon, we will have our emerald; you just watch."

"I hope you are right," Zainab says and gets up, wiping gold dust from her vest.

"I always am," Jaffar beams and looks in the direction of the press. "Children!" 

There is no response.

Zainab claps her hands with a loud rattle of bracelets, then barks loudly. "Salsabil! Anwar!"

Anwar peeks from behind the press, holding up his hands, still wet from pulp. "Hold on, Lady Zainab! We are almost done!"

"I must apologise for my children's manners, madam," Jaffar says, "but they seem to have a good reason to tarry." Swiftly, he leaps over the low table and walks over to the press, with Zainab tinkling in tow. "We need your help, my little philosophers; it's been a while since I read a bestiary, but," and he turns to explain to Zainab, "these two have had their noses buried in them all year."

Salsabil emerges, pulling two of her braids out just in time before they fall into the pulp vat. "What is it, Father?"

"We know that magpies are all attracted to shining objects," Jaffar says, after he has explained their plan to the children. "But we need your help in deciding which _kinds_ of shining objects would attract them the most, so that we may decorate the tree accordingly, in order to catch our feathered thief."

Salsabil looks puzzled, looking from Zainab to Jaffar and back again, as if her father were insane; as if this were some kind of prank.

Anwar, finally having washed his hands, emerges, wiping his hands on his tunic. "Emeralds, Father," he sighs. "I mean, it's... obvious, is it not? That this magpie likes emeralds the most."

"Perhaps," Jaffar mumbles, biting his lip and kicking at a floor tile. "What else was the brooch made of, in addition to the emerald?" he asks Zainab. "What was it set in? Silver? Diamonds?"

"Gold, I think," Zainab says, somewhat reluctantly.

Jaffar nods. "I expect it is the gold that attracted the magpie, given that the bird is surrounded by green all the time. Were I living in a tree, a green jewel wouldn't stand out for me, you see. So it has to have been the gold."

"They usually steal silver-coloured items, though," Salsabil says. "Knives and mirrors. And a magpie would not be able to tell silver from steel. Thus, we could try steel first; at least it's far less expensive."

"Did you hear that?" Zainab laughs and pats Salsabil on the back. "Finally someone talks sense, and economic sense at that. I think I am going to hire you as my treasurer, little one," she says and tickles Salsabil under her chin.

"That's settled, then," Jaffar says and takes a glass of tea from Durga, who has just arrived carrying a trayful. "To our steel-crowned bride!"

"This had better work," Zainab mumbles as she, too, takes a glass.

"It will, Lady Zainab," Anwar beams as he lifts his. "Do not worry."

Salsabil agrees, nodding. "Father _is_ a genius, you know!"


	5. Chapter 5

***

**Late afternoon**

**The forest**

***

It is a relatively short, evergreen oak that Jaffar finally chooses to dress as their magpie trap. He gives three reasons for his choice: first, it is relatively easy for him to climb this tree with his ladder, designed as it is for the tending of fruit trees; second, the fact that it's in leaf makes it far easier to decorate with tinsel and such stuffs; third, that it is the only green tree here that isn't a conifer, and therefore too prickly for comfort.

At New Lesbos's end, Zainab has yielded, to Jaffar's delight, a pleasingly large dressing mirror to serve as their magical window into the treetop; the mirror is as tall and as wide as Zainab herself, offering a good view of the now-glittering bird's nest Jaffar has built amidst the leaves. 

Presently, Zainab herself paces restlessly in the guest bedroom they have installed the mirror in, glancing at the rustling greenery every once in a while. Jaffar has been at the tree all day, now, and it's getting late; Lina has already taken the exhausted children to her quarters to sleep.

"Barmakid," she says loudly, clasping her hands behind her back, taking in the abundance of silver dishes, mirrors and cutlery scattered liberally all over the treetop. "Jaffar?" She calls out again, louder this time.

The leaves rustle, albeit in a way that makes it impossible to see where the movement originates from, let alone where Jaffar himself is hiding. "Yes?" he answers, from somewhere in the green.

"I say, don't you think the tree is pretty enough already? I thought you said we were to dress her like a bride, not like a courtesan."

There is another rustle, accompanied by a chuckle this time, and finally Jaffar himself peeks through the leaves, smiling. "Don't forget, my lady; our magpie's tastes are as extravagant as Fadl's." 

"True," Zainab sighs. "You have some tinsel on your head."

"You are right, of course," Jaffar says, plucking the offending piece of tinsel from his turban, the ladder creaking a little as he shifts his weight upon it. "It's getting dark as well; I'd better head home. Do you remember what I told you?"

Zainab nods. "I'll keep this portal open, and listen out for the bells." 

"I made sure to hang some on every branch, and there are sixteen different talismans here, all linked to your mirror. I've woven a magical net of sorts all over this tree, out of the same energy that now allows us to speak with each other; should any one of its segments vibrate but a little, the mirror will immediately display to you that very segment. Thus, if Master Magpie or any other creature shows up, it's practically impossible for the mirror to not detect it."

"I remember," she says with a dismissive wave of her hand, her bangles chiming loudly. "But, come, surely you won't be able to make it home before dark? You might as well stay here, help us keep an eye on the mirror."

Jaffar raises a flirtatious eyebrow. "And here, I thought you wanted to be rid of me, my lady." 

Zainab grins coquettishly. "Oh, I don't know. Perhaps I wish to make your brother jealous."

"Even better," he laughs. 

"This room has a most _marvellously_ comfortable bed, too," she says, strutting over to it and patting it playfully. "All stuffed with eiderdown; _voluptuously_ soft."

"If you continue like that, madam, I'm going to have trouble getting down from this tree," he smirks, shifting so lasciviously she cannot mistake his meaning.

"It's best you had something nice and _plush_ to land upon, I agree," she purrs and lounges upon the bed, rocking her ample hips. "Come; we can watch the mirror together."

"I'll be there faster than you can say--"

Suddenly, he vanishes. Only the leaves rustle; Jaffar himself has fallen entirely out of the mirror's sight.

"Than I can say what?" Zainab sits up, alarmed. "Jaffar?" She clasps her mouth. "Oh, gods; I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to--"

It is then that there's a loud thump just behind the bed, accompanied by a pained groan. 

Zainab turns to discover Jaffar, lying on the floor in a crumpled heap, clasping his knees and swearing. 

"...There you are, my sorcerer. I take it was the bed you meant to make your spectacular landing upon?"

Indignant, Jaffar crawls onto the bed and buries his face in the pillows, moaning theatrically in indignation. 

Zainab pats his arse jovially. "From the amount of noise you're making, I gather nothing has broken. Do you always show up in a lady's boudoir like this, Abu Anwar? Or only when you're trying to outdo your brother in ridiculousness?"

Jaffar but moans again, a longer and even more theatrical a groan this time.

Zainab sighs, picks up her riding cane from the floor and thwacks him on the arse, far less jovially this time.

Jaffar lifts his head, both annoyed and impressed. "Madam, I might as well ask _you_ if is this how you treat a man once he enters your boudoir?"

Zainab makes a pout, looking at the cane, pretending to consider. "Come to think of it, yes. _Particularly_ if he's a Barmakid." She looks down at him, shaking her head. "It's the only way to keep your lot in line."

He groans and rubs his arse. "Yassamin knew something like this would happen, you know. I asked her if she wasn't worried about leaving her hapless husband in your clutches; she had the audacity to but laugh! So, in case you were wondering, not only is she not jealous, but..."

"But she thinks I should take over the task of disciplining you, is that it? That I should now do it for not one, but two Barmakids?" Zainab says, but there is no longer true humour in her voice, rather bitterness, weariness. 

She lets the cane fall from her hand onto the floor; she sits upon the edge of the bed and sighs. "The truth is," she says in an almost-whisper, "I am tired of playing the disciplinarian. Tired of this whole game; tired of playing a mother to that giant child of a man you call your brother." She stares at her feet, the bells on her toe rings chiming as she curls them in the nap of the carpet. "I never could see myself as a mother, you know. I don't know where I would be, now, had I no knowledge of contraception. And look at me now," she lets out a barking laugh, "mother to a veritable village of girls, and a giant man-child besides!" 

By the time Jaffar has laid a gentle hand upon her shoulder from behind, her back is heaving, trembling; as he kisses the top of her head, he can feel she is swallowing back tears, bravely trying to hide them. Yet, she doesn't snap at him, doesn't push him away; thus, he but holds her, holds her tightly, nuzzling her shoulder. Tears glisten upon her silver toe-rings, now, and finally, she sobs so violently the entire bedframe creaks.

"Why am I doing this?" she cries, exasperated. "Why?! Why am I indulging his petty, childish games? Why do I even submit myself to such humiliations?! Pray, is this what you call love? Slavery, I call it; for it's a slave he treats me as; like... " she sobs, "like some _nursery maid,_ " she spits, "to clean up all his messes after him, his scorn my only reward. And I swore--" she shakes her head violently, her jewellery ringing like clashing weapons, "I swore I would never be a slave again!"

"My lady..."

With a shriek of rage, she kicks the cane into the farthest corner of the room. "I am _done_ with this, you hear? Done with this game, done with _him!_ " 

"Zainab..."

Finally, she turns to him, her face red and streaked with tears and kohl, her anguish and anger having burned off her famous beauty, leaving behind only a raging demoness.

"Don't you dare!" She screams in his face. "Don't you dare defend him, simply because he is your brother! I have a good mind to banish you from my estates, you and him, banish all Barmakids from my lands forever! I--"

It is then that he cups her face in his hands, tender, and kisses her. 

He kisses her as one kisses a demoness, as one kisses a djinni fallen from Heaven with the rebel angels, one whose wings have burned. _I, too, have burned,_ he whispers around her with his mind, although he refrains from entering hers; _burned in that same fire, of having loved the Fadl who threw that love back in my face, the Fadl who refused to be loved, the Fadl whose self-destruction I had to witness without being able to help him, because he would not let me. But the difference between you and I, Zainab, is that he is my brother; for good or for worse, I am bound to him by blood, whereas you are not. You are not his wife, nor his slave, yet he treats you with the unkindness of a tyrant. No, Zainab: you do not deserve these continuous humiliations for all the love you've given him, over and over. I would not have you, too, take upon yourself this same suffering that I have had to endure, my lady; I would not wish for you to be dragged down into his hell._

"You are free," he pants as he pulls back from the kiss, pressing his forehead against hers, his own tears and kohl now having mixed with hers, so that both their cheeks are stained. "Zainab of Samarkand, you are your own woman. You belong only to yourself. Do not let him, or anyone else, ever tell you otherwise."

She moans into his mouth in despair, kissing him back passionately, violently. "Say that again," she demands, tearing at his robes; "Say that again!"

He does. He knows that she knows these words for the truth, but also knows there are times when one is so weary, so trodden into the ground that one forgets who one is, forgets one's worth. So he repeats these words to her a litany, a mantra; he reaffirms her worth by holding her, kissing her, loving her the way she deserves to be loved, lest she forget. With his hands, he resurrects this knowledge within her, kneading it into quickening within her flesh once more; with his kisses he stirs her life-breath into flowing freely once more; with the strength of his heart beating against hers, he awakens her pride once more.

Again, he pulls back from a kiss and cups her face within his hands, staying her passion a little. "I have a question to ask of you," he says. 

"Yes, what is it?" She asks him, impatiently undoing the laces of her vest.

"Will you promise not to hit me?"

"Yes, yes," she says, casting the vest aside and opening her shirt, trying to bring his hands to her breasts. But when he doesn't allow this, she finally pauses, looking at him askance.

"Listen to me," he says gently, with the utmost tenderness he can muster. "As you can see, I am not exactly an unwilling seductee here," he laughs and looks down at the bulge in his robes. "But I must know whether this is what you truly want, considering," and he glances around himself symbolically, encompassing all of New Lesbos, and therefore her preferences, with this look. "You yourself know your desires best, better than I or anyone else. You want to be true to yourself, and I..."

She sighs. "And you wonder if my... dalliances with men are but whims, and whether I wouldn't be truest to myself by giving my love to women only."

"Something like that, yes." 

"Don't think I haven't thought about it," she says, raising her eyebrow. "It would most certainly make things a lot easier. I know they laugh about my 'experiments' behind my back; at worst, this whole... well, experiment with Fadl makes me look like a hypocrite. It's part of the reason I am done with him, you realise. For at first, I didn't care about what it did to my dignity, but it's become clear that he is not worth ruining one's dignity for."

Jaffar winces. "If this were any other man, I would feel you were being cruel towards him, savage. But trust me, I understand. I am surprised, actually, by just how long you've put up with him."

"Mmm. There are only a few men out there who are worth compromising one's dignity for," she says, smiling; this time, he allows her to bring his hands to her breasts. "That's why I wasn't as concerned about any of that when it was you, that first time."

"I am honoured," he says and cups her breasts gently.

"I'm not finished," she laughs. "Upon reflection, I think that I will, indeed, give men up altogether; go back to how things were. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else. But I would like for my last time with a man to be a pleasant one: something I can remember with fondness, later. So that I will not go to my grave with only bitter memories of men--I wish for that bitterness to be diluted with the sweetness of a good man, a man who respects women. Thus, I want my last man to be you."

"I am even more honoured," he laughs, nuzzling her face. 

"Don't get too proud," she says and slaps his back. "It's just that you're the only woman-respecting man alive."

"And that's supposed to make me _less_ proud?" He grins and kisses her nose. "Come, my lady, how do you want me?"

She looks at the stains on his tunic and wrinkles her nose. "First, I think we both need a good wash, and something to eat and drink. Come."


	6. Chapter 6

***

**New Lesbos**

**Zainab's bedchamber**

***

After a bath, a warm meal and a generous bowlful of spiced wine, Zainab leads Jaffar by the hand to her own bedchamber, insisting that its bed is just as soft as the one in the guest bedroom, and that her girls can keep a good eye on the mirror while they're gone. 

"I've left Tahira to watch the mirror. She's one of my Amazons, her eyes as sharp as can be, and alert always; the same can be said of Huna, who will take over after. Besides, even magpies need sleep; only owls fly about this late at night. Come, I beg of you, Jaffar; let us not concern ourselves with that blasted tree, or the whole affair, any longer tonight. I want us to forget about it all."

Jaffar cannot help but glance at the doorway. "I shall try. Unless there is an alarm, of course."

"There won't be," she says firmly, and practically yanks him into bed. "Come here."

"Your wish is my command, my lady," he sighs.

"You truly are a conscientious man," she says wistfully, with an unspoken _'and I wish you turned the attention of that conscience to me'_ in her eyes.

"I apologise," he sighs and hugs her close. "I meant what I said; your wish truly is my command."

He pulls her down onto the bed, gathering her to himself so that her head is resting against his chest, against his steady heartbeat. They lie there in their silken night-robes and perfumes, both silent as they watch the incense smoke from the braziers curl up to caress the coloured lanterns, finally disappearing into the tapestries draped across the ceiling. These tapestries depict Diana and her nymphs bathing after their hunt, frolicking in the water; yet there is, aptly, no Actaeon, no leering satyr here to mar the idyll with his craven desire. 

Jaffar almost asks her again if she is sure that she wants him, but it's somewhat difficult for him to argue his concerns with her plump little hand now cupping his lax prick through the silks.

"It's been a long day," he murmurs into her hair. "But worry not; as you can see, he is already paying attention," he grins.

"Do you often tend to her like this?" Zainab murmurs, sliding her hand gently, softly over the bulge of his cock, in a tease so perfect it sends a shiver through his hips. "Yassamin, I mean. She's one of the most nervous women I've ever met."

"Mmm-hmm. I consider it my true expertise, the art of exorcising that nervousness from her. The dolls, the alchemy--they are but my avocations. The truest alchemy lies in studying and discovering all the different methods by which to heal those who..." he drifts off, a short noise escaping his lips at a particularly delicious caress from Zainab. Now, his cock has swelled so that its tip has pushed the silk aside, already beading with sap; as Zainab taps at it with her fingertip and draws a string of wetness from it, he groans in delight once more.

Zainab chuckles. "That, as you know, is _my_ expertise."

"You still haven't given me your command, my dear," he says and undoes the ribbons at the front of her robe, sliding his hand inside to cup her breast. "What kind of role you would wish for me to take, that is."

"Let me think." Leisurely but swiftly, she proceeds to undress them both, then lies down on top of him, gently undulating against him, his half-hard cock nestled into the lovely weight and softness of her belly. "Are you very tired?"

"Not too tired," he says, stroking her buttocks. "You said you were tired of disciplining Fadl, however, and seeing as you take the active role with your girls, _and_ that you implied you wanted something different from me, I gather that you wish for love that's a little more..." he slaps her buttocks firmly, grinning suggestively. 

"You gathered correctly," she says and rolls onto her back on the bed, her massive breasts lolling upon her chest. "Yes, I think I shall let you do all the work this time," she grins. 

Jaffar raises his eyebrow. "Be careful what you wish for. Come, then. Where do you keep your box of tricks?"

"Underneath the bed."

"Show me," he says, with more command in his voice, more steel in his eyes this time, adoring how her face lights up at this show of power.

Zainab's pride may not have allowed her to form the words 'please dominate me' out loud, but seeing how she now awakens with the thrill of the prospect of being his to _work_ upon--well. It is the kind of tending he is best at, after all, and Zainab knows it; she wouldn't have invited him to her bed if it weren't for that kind of lovemaking exactly. She still remembers that night he had strung her up, had made her beautiful with the cruelty of his sapphires and his cane; even if tonight will surely be less extravagant, he is committed to making it worth her while. 

For it is not every day a man is offered the task of being the last man a woman takes to her bed; if tonight is to become a happy memory for her to savour for the rest of her life, he is determined to make it memorable indeed.

Presently, Zainab lifts the box onto the bed and opens it. "Here."

With a deliberate slowness and care, Jaffar examines all the toys in the box. He feels the weight of whips, of plugs, the textures of artificial pricks short and long; assessing the qualities of all the various beads and paddles, straps and harnesses. Finally, he picks up a heavy silver chain from which dangle two clips, each with a heavy, teardrop-shaped sapphire pendant attached. The very same sapphire pendants he had once used upon her nipples, upon the folds of her sex. That she would've kept them all these years, for this very purpose! He thought she would've had them made into earrings or something similar.

"But, my lady, I am touched!" he grins, with genuine affection as he dangles the chain from his hand. "Have you worn these often, then?"

She shakes her head, grinning back. "Never, as a matter of fact. Usually, it's my girls I use these on."

He turns the chain to and fro, admiring the way the sapphires pick up the lanterns' light, glittering. "Well, then. It's only proper we should use these tonight, don't you think? For old times' sake."

He adores the way she can barely hold her composure; yet, the way her eyes widen a little, the way her shoulders shift _just so_ \--these reveal her nervousness, her excitement, the combination of these sending a lash of wicked delight through his belly, lifting his cock. 

"Yes," she says, her voice breaking just a little, but she keeps smiling: as always, she would rather die than have Jaffar or anyone else outdo her in perversity. 

"Do not mistake me, my sweet; I wouldn't dare suggest anything you did not _truly_ desire," he purrs, handing out the chain. "I'll let you put them on yourself."

Her eyes flash; she snatches the chain from him. "Do you think I am afraid? Afraid of a little pain?" she snaps.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, my lady," he croons, now lying down on his side in lascivious delight, leaning his head on his left hand. "I but wish to _watch._ "

Zainab raises her eyebrow; she has never been able to resist a challenge, particularly if that challenge is of the erotic sort. "Very well."

She moves to kneel before him, almost close enough to touch; she makes a show of arranging herself for display, with all the confidence and ease of a woman who knows how beautiful she is, not only expecting but _exacting_ adoration. And oh, how Jaffar does indeed give it to her with his gaze, with his body: he tilts his head like a cat, offering to her the beauty of his eyes, every sweep of his eyelashes a caress upon her skin, the beauty of his stirring flesh now rising to greet her. He rocks his hips, his cock shifting and swaying and rising ever further as he watches her dancing before him, she caressing herself with the chain, warming it with the heat of her body before she wears it. 

"Show me," he murmurs. 

By now, her nipples, ordinarily sunken into her areolae, have risen out from her arousal; yet, she still has to tease the left one further out of its bud, pulling upon it a little before she can attach the clip--curiously, not over the tip itself, but just underneath it. She shivers visibly as she tightens the little screw upon the clip, biting her lip so that it turns white; he can only just hear a pained whimper in her throat.

"Interesting," he says, with genuine curiosity. 

She struggles to breathe, looks as if she is about to say something--perhaps something along the lines of _'Put that in your mind's love manual, Barmakid'_ \--but Jaffar himself knows that the pain is far too powerful at this point to allow her much in the way of speech. Her hands trembling slightly, she repeats the procedure with her right nipple, lowering the chain with great care to hang between her breasts; finally, she lowers her hands to her sides, clutched into fists.

"You are beautiful," he murmurs. 

Gently, oh, so very gently he moves towards her, glad that the mattress doesn't shift very much with his movements, so as not to give her any more pain. Softly, he turns to kneel behind her, his hands light and sweet upon her arms as he strokes them to soothe her; he nuzzles the hair away from her cheek to better kiss it, whispering tenderness in her ear. "Shh. Beautiful," he murmurs as she whimpers at his touch; "Beautiful," he speaks louder still as she moans in his arms, as she sinks back into his embrace. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful," he keeps repeating as he caresses her arms, her belly, her thighs, supporting her weight with his body. "Beautiful," he kisses up her neck and across her shoulders, licking up the cold sweat that's now sprung up upon the nape of her neck. 

It is such a rare and precious thing, this, to be trusted with the heart and body and soul of a woman so proud and so scarred; a precious thing indeed for a man to be allowed to see a woman so vulnerable when she has been so savaged, so hurt by men; to be allowed to hold her so bare and so helpless within his arms when she is still raw and bleeding on the inside. Thus, he reveres her like the treasure she is: gathering her tremors into his palms like so much silk, plucking her whimpers from her mouth like so many sweet fruit, carrying the heaviness of her body like so much silver and gold. He lets her feel the hard, sinewed strength of his body, the strength of his mind and of his spirit, the surety of him, the safety of him; thus he gives unto her all that he can, to prove to her that he is worthy of her trust, that she has done the right thing in giving all of herself so unto his safekeeping.

Softly, very softly he runs his fingertips across her lower breasts, just underneath the chain. "Shall I loosen the clips a little?"

"No," she breathes. 

He flattens his palms against her waist, running them down her belly until his fingertips come to frame her mound. He presses there, massaging her until she moans; as he peeks over her shoulder, he can see she has dripped so much that she's made a wet stain on the sheets.

"Very pretty," he chuckles. "I think it's time I gave you a little more, however. Would you lie down for me?"

She does not reply in words, only does as requested. Slowly, still stiff from the pain, she moves to lie down on the bed, propping her back against the great pile of pillows heaped at the head of the bed. She is gritting her teeth even as she spreads her legs, barely breathing as even the rise of her chest makes the chain, and the pendants, move a little. 

Yet she looks far too pained, her skin covered in goosebumps; the look in her eyes is so glazed it reminds Jaffar not of love-play, but of those times he has seen Yassamin in the throes of vicious menstrual pain, in shock, close to fainting. And this, he cannot bear. 

Still very careful, he moves to kneel between her legs and brings his hands to her breasts. "I would give you pleasure-pain, my sweet, but not torture you," he says, his own voice heavy with concern. "Therefore, you must allow me to loosen these a little, Zainab," he says and shakes his head. "I would not have you punish yourself like this, would not have this pain overwhelm the pleasure I wish to give you."

Still, she won't speak; she but closes her eyes and leans back on the cushions, lowering her head in what looks like acquiescence. He kisses her forehead, appalled at how even that makes her tremble in pain; as quickly and as gently as possible, he loosens the clamps and takes them off entirely. She sobs as he does so, yet he catches those sobs in his mouth, too; he cups her wounded breasts in her hands, murmuring "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry." Sorry for what she must be feeling, sorry for whatever has made her hurt herself like this, whether it's something to do with Fadl, or something to do with the horrors of her more distant past. Her pain swells around him so that he can feel it blossoming in his own chest, his own nipples pierced by the agony, now; now, it is he who sobs into her mouth, kissing her and kissing her, hugging her tight. 

Finally, she wraps her arms around him, too, and laughs in disbelief into his hair, through swallowed tears. "And to think we have only just begun!"

"Come," he says, pulling back, lifting her chin with his hand, so happy to see her smiling through her tears. "Let us start again. What do you say?"

"I say 'get to work,'" she laughs, still sniffling a little. "I--ah!"

But she cannot finish what she had meant to say, for Jaffar has already dived down between her legs to worship, quite literally planting his face into her cunny and moaning in delight. He laps open her folds, laps and laps to taste her delicious sap, his mouth having watered for it for so long; he closes his eyes and groans, smacking his lips as he emerges for air. 

"Wonderful," he sighs.

"So are you," Zainab murmurs in a daze, stroking his hair with her hands. 

"Although I think," he says and takes her wrists in a psychic grip, "that you do need a little more restraint, young lady," he grins and pins her wrists into the pillows above her head, fixing them in place with a whispered rune. "That's better."

She but throws back her head and groans. "I am not even going to give you the pleasure of calling you a bastard, because you would enjoy it too much."

"Mmm." He spreads her legs and lifts them, so that they are held up in the air a little, making things comfortable for her and for himself; when he deems her position pleasing enough for them both, he returns to her cunny. 

If this is to be the last time he ever gets to enjoy this feast of the flesh, he is going to make the most of it: adoring, he frames the massive delta of her cunny with his hands, using his thumbs to press its lips together around her clitoris in massaging motions, in the way he knows she loves. He delights in watching her haughtiness melt into a drunkenness of pleasure, listening to the deep coos and groans in her chest as over and over, he squeezes her cunny thus; relishes the way her hips lift off the bed whenever he gifts her clitoris with a little lick.

He doesn't wish to tease her for too long, seeing as he is getting impatient himself; by now, he, too, is dripping down to his balls, more than ready to enter her. Yet he is determined to make her come before he takes her; thus, he takes her clitoris into his mouth and begins to whip it with his tongue, to suck at it--and just as well as her little nymphs do, even if he says so himself. Yet at first, it's even difficult for him to seal his mouth onto her cunny, so wonderfully wet it is from her arousal; her clitoris is so swollen it takes a while for him to get used to its shape, so different is it from Yassamin's tinier bud. But he does remember she likes a strong suck, and that's what he proceeds to give her: a series of short, firm sucks until she is tossing, yelping in her bonds.

"You son of a bitch!"

"What's that?"

"...I'm sorry. Force of habit."

"Is that what you call Fadl in bed?" he laughs, slowly easing two fingers inside of her cunny. Now, here, he does remember his way: just like Yassamin, Zainab enjoys a touch that's directed deep and downwards, below her womb and the fingertips pointing towards her spine; he curls there and Zainab's answer turns into but a garbled yowl. 

"Astonishing!" he cries in mock-surpise. "That's exactly the noise Mustafa made when the children tried to bathe him."

"I take it back!" She squirms furiously, trying to kick at his back with her toes. "You are a son of a bitch after all; just as bad as your brother!"

"How dare you!" He exclaims, now mock-appalled. "I'll have you know I'm _much, much worse._ "

"I should hope not," she mumbles, more serious, now. "Please, Jaffar," she squirms again. "Don't tease."

He glances down at himself; his cock is positively aching, already somewhat purpling. "As a matter of fact, he is getting impatient, too," he says, yet he never stops stroking her with his fingers. "But this is a matter of honour for me, my love. I will not enter you until you've come on my hand and my mouth, and that's that. And if you're having trouble, I think I know just the trick..."

She looks ready to snap something at him, but now her eyes fly wide as he sends out another series of psychic tendrils, this time around her breasts; swiftly, he lifts them up and pinches them where the clips had done, far gentler this time but still firm enough to make her cunny pulse against his mouth, to make her _keen_ from the bottom of her hips. He needn't even quip anything at her, the satisfaction of seeing and feeling her reactions reward enough for him: now, all that remains for him is to keep on sucking, sucking, curling his fingertips and with a psychic pull at the nipples, _tugging_ \--

Her shriek nearly punctures his eardrums, but oh, it's worth it; she trickles into his mouth, his every suck and thrust and tug milking her orgasm out of her, all of her body shaking violently in release, this release that she had been holding back for so long. Her massive thighs clutch around his head, so that he can barely hear her screams, now, only feel them as they radiate into his hand and his skull through her trembling, spasming flesh; her cunny itself sucks around his fingers, so violently does it now contract around them, her hips pounding against his teeth. He keeps on milking her, sucking her until the tiniest, minutest of tremors still clutches at his fingers, no matter how much his jaw aches; only when she groans in exhaustion, letting her thighs fall open, does he finally let go. 

Letting go, for him, means that he releases all the telepathic bonds, and lowers himself to lie over her. As he does so, he slips his cock inside of her cunny, as if it were the most natural thing for him to do; he sighs into her shoulder, resting there in her arms, nestled inside of her body. He could almost fall asleep like this, but is too tired to even put that into words, to tell her; even if he hasn't fully linked his mind with hers, it's as if he has had a mild orgasm himself, so sated does he feel thus resting inside of her.

She is even mellower, smiling broadly, her eyes slitted like those of a very satisfied cat. "I want to say I almost don't care what you'll do to me next," she says and yawns. 

"Mmm." 

"But I fear that if we stay like this, we _will_ fall asleep and wake up with inflamed cunny and inflamed prick."

"Mmm."

She slaps his buttocks with the soles of her feet. "I am serious."

"Tell me something," he mumbles, still without lifting his head from her shoulder; it is so soft and so plush, all of her like a sea of warm pillows--he really is struggling not to fall asleep upon her. 

"Yes?"

"You _did_ recite the womb-sealing spell beforehand, did you not?"

"Of course I did. At the baths," she chuckles. "I know I said I wanted to have some lasting memories of this night, but nothing as tangible as a babe, thank you very much!" She practically shudders at the idea. 

"Good." Finally, he lifts his head from her shoulder. "I am sorry for so vetoing the clamps," he says, caressing her hair from her face. "I did not wish to condescend."

She shakes her head a little, casting down her eyes. "You were right; I am a woman of excesses. That's what I have Lina for; to keep me in check. You were only doing what she would've done." She lifts her eyes to meet his once more, then squeezes her cunny playfully around his cock. "As long as you do not veto _this_ fellow."

He looks down at himself. "I am afraid he has his own vote in this matter, my lady; I get the feeling he will vote to stay in this union of--"

"Of convoluted metaphor and aching sexes," she nods, clapping her hands over his buttocks. "Come, my cheetah. Make love to me while we're both still awake."

He kisses her nose. "To hear is to obey."

With a luxuriant sigh, he begins. He takes Zainab's wrists once more and pins them to the pillows; slowly, he undulates against her, rolling his hips and his body as his prick stays almost entirely still within her. He stirs both their desires with this stillness, sensitising their flesh to make the eventual strokes, when they come, even more blissful; indeed, when he finally pulls back and gives her a deep, slow stroke, both of them moan and shudder in unison from how wonderful it feels. He continues in the same fashion, alternating what he does outside of her body while remaining unmoving inside of her. Now, he squeezes her breasts and drinks her moans into his mouth; now, he runs his fingertips lightly across the soft flesh of her raised inner arms, adoring the way she shudders around him, her cunny fluttering around his cock in desperation. After each one of his stillnesses that make both their sexes more and more sensitive with anticipation, he makes each new stroke longer, harder, deeper; he himself is struggling to maintain this technique, such is the intensity of the pleasure-waves now rippling through his body. He groans, bellows as he stills inside of her again, all of him shivering as he fights the urge to thrust; his toes curl and dig hard into the mattress, and as she digs her nails into his back, his bellows turn into high keens.

"Please, please, please," she whispers in his ear, squeezing him with her cunny rhythmically, urging him into giving her more; now, her nipples are hard against his chest, she unable to stop trembling herself. "More, please, more, you--"

But her urging is cut short as he lets go; the pleasure has turned so dazzling inside of him, sparking in his nerves red and white and blue; he cannot bear it any longer and begins to pound into her, hard and fast and animal, his balls slapping noisily against her cunny, her sap flying onto their thighs. "Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch yourself," he meaows; "Let me feel that little cunny, let me feel that little cunny come," he mewls from between his teeth.

Her cheeks flushed, she puffs into his face, not only stroking her cunny but beating her hips up into his thrusts with a force equal to his; "Give it, give it, give it," she snarls right back at him, squeezing around him with her thighs and her free arm, swallowing him within the ocean of her flesh. She clasps him tightly, hissing, moaning low in her throat, completely uninhibited, screaming her orgasm into his kiss so loudly it rings in his skull; but oh, what sweet music it is for him to beat it out of her with the rhythm of his hips. Tears pour from her eyes into her ears as she spasms around him, her cunny clutching his cock over and over, pulling upon it so that his sap is pulled up with it, too, up, up; they shout into each other's faces as he slams into her release, pouring his own into hers, swirling it inside of her, lost within the depths of her flesh. 

He does not know how many times she comes around him, so long is he tossed upon her and within her, she keeping his prick hard with the sheer force of her inner muscles; with one last loud cry, she turns him around and rides him, rides him so violently she must be hurting herself. Her kohl smeared from her tears, she sobs unintelligible words as she grinds herself down onto him, crushing him into the bed with her hips; her bracelets blur and crash and rattle as she strokes herself into her final, gushing release, her breasts jumping, her stomach undulating, her shrieks echoing through his body as she showers his belly, hers. Growling right back at her, he thrusts into her as much as he can, sticking his tongue out to lap at her ejaculate like a lewd demon at the door of a pagan temple; he clutches at her buttocks so hard he leaves welts, his neck aching as he reaches out to swallow every drop but oh, how he adores it, adores. When she pauses for breath, he surprises her in turn, tackling her onto the bed once more; he pushes his fingers inside of her and milks the last of her nectar out of her, drinking it with a madman's greed, not finishing until she begs for mercy, begs for it with her fingers in his hair, her voice hoarse from screaming. 

"Please, mercy," she mumbles.

With a loud groan, he heaves himself up and crashes beside her, draping an arm around her belly. His jaw aches, his back aches, his arms ache--hell, all of him aches, but it was worth it. Whether it was thus for her also, remains to be seen, of course; he creaks one eye open a little and Zainab is lying still with her eyes closed, her breasts heaving as she catches her breath. The rhythm of her breathing is so even--and he is so tired--he really is so very tired. He shouldn't drift off to sleep; he knows Zainab would never forgive him if he did. But he is so tired, so, so tired...

***

Jaffar is sleeping soundly, and it's just as well, Zainab thinks as she gets up to wash. Perhaps it was too much to hope for a little sodomy on top of all this, considering how sudden, how unplanned this whole tryst was; besides, he is an aging man and she is already sore. 

Thus, this is the end of it, the end of her dalliances with men, she thinks as she rinses Jaffar's seed out of herself; the last time she will ever have to perform this task. It's too soon for her to tell whether she is relieved or melancholy at this; perhaps it is a little of both, she sighs as she pulls on a woollen dress and socks. Despite the freezing cold of the night, she needs some fresh air; she doesn't bother to call for her eunuchs, only slips on her ermine coat, her sturdiest shoes and heads out--but not before she has tucked Jaffar in to ensure that he, too, stays warm.

Once she is on the rooftop, she asks for her guards to retreat downstairs; she wishes to be entirely alone. The night is crisp and beautiful, the stars especially bright because of the exceptional cold; the moon, half full, is surrounded by a misty halo. So long, she has lived without seeing a night like this; the last time she saw and felt anything like it, she was but a little girl, standing in the front yard of her family home, listening as her father taught her the names of the stars. How to trace one's way from one constellation to another, from the Great Chariot up to the Giant's Sword, and there, just a little above it and to its left, a cluster of stars in the shape of a semicircle. 

_Freyja's Necklace._

The great Brisingamen, with the ability to work miracles. 

And it is a miracle she needs, now. 

"Freyja," she murmurs, her breath a plume of frost, obscuring the stars from sight; when she can see the constellation clearly again, she kneels down in the snow, lifts out her hands and prays. 

_So far hast Thou brought me, my Great Lady; through so many hardships hast Thou led me, pouring upon me both Thy curses and Thy blessings alike. And all throughout, have I kept faith; even when they were about to behead me for refusing to bow down to their God, did I hold fast to mine vow to only ever bow down to Thee. Great Lady, I find myself anguished, even afeard; I, who have known so little fear, now fear what punishment might fall upon me for giving up this love whose honey has turned into bitter gall. Thou who knowest all hearts, Thou who always exhorteth us to follow our hearts, knowest that I am to mine own heart now true; I know this decision to be sound and right, but pray, my Lady, what of the consequences? Thou who knowest all that has passed, and all that ever will be: give me strength, give me faith, give me guidance, I beg of Thee. I am but a weak mortal, but Thy strength is the strength of ages; older than Odin Himself, surpassing in strength even Thor Himself, please let me drink from that cup of everlasting courage from which Thou didst serve the immortal warriors, sages and seers._

She remains there in silent prayer until the cold overwhelms her; her hands are numb from the cold and her socks are wet when she finally returns to the warmth of the bedchamber. She drags one of the braziers closer to the bed, undresses and burrows in beside Jaffar, curling up in his arms.

"Your feet are ice-cold," he mumbles, wrapping an arm around her waist. "Where are your socks?"

"Nevermind my socks," she sighs.

Why he chuckles so loudly at that, she cannot fathom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A worksafe doodle of Zainab praying can be found [here.](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1447217)


	7. Chapter 7

***

**The Blue House**

***

"How goes the magpie hunt?" Yassamin asks as she welcomes Jaffar home with an embrace.

Jaffar buries his face in her shoulder and lets out a long, exaggerated groan. 

"That bad?"

"Worse," he sighs into her hair, hugging her tight. "But, as a matter of fact, we might soon cease being dragged into such foolish endeavours entirely. After this, Zainab is planning to leave Fadl, once and for all."

"She is _always_ planning to leave him," Yassamin groans.

"Mmm," he murmurs into her shoulder, gives her one more squeeze for good measure, then finally pulls back. "Do you know, my love, I think that this time, she might truly mean it. She has never got this far in her preparations for such, for a start. All the possessions she had left at his house, she's had brought back to New Lesbos, and vice versa. For all intents and purposes, Fadl has already been left, but doesn't know it yet."

"And what does Fadl himself think about it all?"

"Like I said, he doesn't know it yet--careful with the curtain!" He shouts as the children rush in through the brocaded door to greet their mother, with the noise and tumult only two excited nine-year-olds can make. 

"Hello, my little ones!" Yassamin hugs both of the children close. "Did you have a good ti--"

"We had an _excellent_ time, Mother!" "We had a _great_ time; thank you, Mother!" The children exclaim and talk all over each other, dragging Yassamin to the nearest couch in a whirldwind of intricate descriptions of papermaking machines, hyperbolic elegies on the art of bookmaking and fervent pleas to be allowed back into the scriptorium as soon as possible.

"I'll tell you all about it after dinner," Jaffar says to Yassamin over the children's narrations, then kisses her on the head. "Remember it's bath day for the whole family today, children," he says and ruffles the two little heads; Salsabil still has some ink stains on her fingernails and Anwar seems to have got pulp in his hair. "I'll see you later tonight."

"Where are you going?" Yassamin asks over Anwar's energetic miming of the paper machine's hammers, stomping and pounding with his feet.

"To the shabestan," he cries over his shoulder. "I have to set up another crystal here to watch the tree."

"All right."

"Not that it'll help much, I'll wager," he mutters to himself as he walks out of the door.

***

**Later that evening**

**The love chamber**

***

"It'll never last," Yassamin says, shaking her head and sipping from her wine. "And that's that. How many times has she already left Fadl, only to return a couple of weeks later, at most? How many times has he run away from her, only to come crawling back with his tail between his legs? A tail she cannot live without," Yassamin slurs, nodding with the conviction of the intoxicated, the wine spilling a little as she hands the bowl to Jaffar. "She needs that horse-cock as much as she needs air. Mark my words, she'll hop back on it in no time at all."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Jaffar murmurs, staring into the wine. "Something tells me that this time, it's different; that this whole business with the jewels has been the proverbial straw that's broken the camel's back." He looks up at her, swirling the wine in the bowl, not drinking from it. "You should have seen her when she lay in my arms, weeping in her despair; the poor woman was devastated, trembling. She looked like a cornered animal; looked as if she was afraid of dying. And you know Zainab; fear is a stranger to her. It really did seem to me as if she had reached the end of her endurance, as if she had poured all of her love, all of her life-force into this affair, and was now running dry. You know, I wonder if it isn't because of her girls that she's suffered Fadl for so long; because she has always had the love of women to return to, has always had her girls to patch up her wounds. But one can only take so many blows before one is permanently crippled. Perhaps she has seen herself staggering under the weight of his insults, has felt her age, has felt her own mortality, and now wishes to rid herself of..."

"Of someone unnecessary, to put it diplomatically," Yassamin sighs. "It is true. I have always wondered why they've gone on for so long; your theory about the girls as a balm makes sense. I do not blame her; I do not blame her at all. She would absolutely be happier without him; of that, I am certain." She buries her face into the cushions and groans. "Yet it is not she I am afraid for, but Fadl, afraid of what his reaction will be. Can you imagine? You don't need to imagine. What drunken sprees, what self-destructive tavern brawls, what suicide attempts will we have to witness?"

Jaffar winces. "That's exactly what worries me. Zainab has her girls to turn to, but it is _us_ that Fadl will turn to in his need; we will have to bear the brunt of it. It is always _we_ who have to patch him up whenever he gets up to something stupid." He thinks of passing the bowl to Yassamin, but on second thought, decides to empty it down his throat instead. "Perhaps we should kidnap him, lock him up somewhere safe before she tells him," he grumbles. "And I am only half-jesting."

"I know," Yassamin groans once more. "I wonder if there is any way we could change her mind. But on the other hand, I would not see her suffer." She shakes her head, sighing. "To think that he gave up a kingdom for her, and still tortures her like this."

"Perhaps that's exactly it--that he regrets it and takes his bitternesses out on her."

"Oh, she has told me as much," Yassamin says, turns around to face her mirror and starts to undo her hair for the night. "That his lost kingdom is all he ever talks about: that because of it, he demands her to live up to some ideal, some dream-Zainab, some fantasy of her that he has cooked up in his head. That he is not unlike a harridan who tells her husband she gave up all her best years for him, only that his sacrifices are on much grander a scale. Yet she did not ask for him to do _any_ of that; it is he who has laid the weight of an entire kingdom upon her shoulders, demanding that she prove to him that she is worth giving up one for. Help me," she sighs and gestures to the gold ornaments now tangled in her hair, "I am too drunk to do this myself."

"All right," he laughs fondly and helps her undo her jewels. "Did Zainab, indeed, not tell him to stay in Balkh in the first place, to not do anything so foolish, as much as it flattered her?" He asks as he takes out her hairbrush and gently, begins to untangle her hair.

"I believe she did," Yassamin yawns. "She is not as stupid as she sometimes seems; she knew him well enough by that point to know his moods, whims, his _masterful_ skill at creating himself new regrets."

"That's what I always tell him," Jaffar says, sliding Yassamin's jacket and shirt down to her arms, kissing her shoulders. "That once he's rid himself of one regret, he's already got three more brewing."

She turns around suddenly, despairing. "Jaffar, I cannot bear it. He hasn't even started yet, and already I cannot bear it," she sighs, pressing her head against his chest, nuzzling the warm skin exposed by his undone shirt. "Can you believe it, I almost feel as if we should escape again, but this time, from _them?_ I wanted for us to live our life out here in peace and quiet, raising our own children; not becoming foster parents to two foolish adults on top of that."

He undoes her shirt, kissing her breasts tenderly. "It wasn't quite what I had in mind myself, no," he sighs. "But come, let us not talk of those two any more tonight--see how they are taking over our lives right now, because we are allowing them to do so? In our love-chamber of all places, this place of joy where sorrow is forbidden to enter?"

She pulls off his shirt, tossing it aside with determination. "Come to bed, then, husband mine."

He leans into her and sighs, rocking her in his arms. "I will find a way to spare us the brunt of it, my love. I promise."


	8. Chapter 8

***

**A week later**

**The Blue House**

***

Midwinter arrives, and with it, all its diverse festivities. At the Blue House, the celebration is that of Yalda, the long night that begins on the eve of the Solstice. The low tables are set with pristine white cloths and all the season's last fruits are served from the finest, richly ornamented silver dishes: watermelons have pride of place in the middle of pears, apricots and figs, the fruits surrounded by crystal bowls filled to the brim with different types of nuts. The children insist on being the ones to light all the candles in the house; Jaffar dutifully offers his shoulders for them to sit upon as they do so, turning the entertaining-chamber into a sea of light.

"You have some candle wax on you," Yassamin says and scratches it off Jaffar's turban with a fingernail. 

"It's supposed to bring good luck," he says and embraces her.

She raises her eyebrow. "I've never heard of it being lucky."

"You haven't, because I just made it up," he laughs and extricates himself. 

"As if we needed more superstitions in this world!" She laughs and pats him on the back. "Come; help me set up the korsi."

Jaffar wipes sweat from his forehead. "Perhaps we should set it up outside again; I'm burning up."

"Nonsense," she says as she and Jaffar unroll the great, thick korsi rug and drape it over the perforated table. "The idea is to remain warm; I am freezing."

It is then that Zahra arrives with the blanket and helps Yassamin spread it out over the rug.

"That, too?" Jaffar says, wiping yet more sweat from his forehead. 

"But you look feverish!" Zahra exclaims and puts the back of her hand to Jaffar's forehead.

"It's nothing," Jaffar says and lies down on the cushions. "I am but an old man and need to catch my breath a little."

Yassamin looks at Zahra, alarmed, then feels for Jaffar's forehead herself--indeed, it is hot. 

"I think you should--" Yassamin starts, but is interrupted as Salsabil practically knocks her over, carrying an armful of fresh candles. 

"For the table!" Salsabil cries as Anwar follows, with a crystal candelabrum in tow.

"Where on _earth_ did you find those?" Zahra asks, taking a few of the candles from Salsabil. "I thought we were fresh out." 

"I kept them in my room. For emergencies," Salsabil replies, although everyone knows that 'emergencies,' in Salsabil's case, mean reading books until the small hours, despite her parents' wishes.

"And you, Anwar, give that back!" Yassamin says. "We can't put it on the korsi; the candles will melt."

"We can put it up there!" Anwar says and points to the lintel of the door he's just come through.

Jaffar groans from underneath his arm. "No more climbing, my son. My back is killing me."

The children exchange defiant glances; the sorts of glances that usually precede dangerous feats of magic. 

"You can give us a candelabrum dance, Anwar," Zahra suggests, quickly. "Why not save it up for that?"

"But that's a marvellous idea!" Jaffar cries and leaps up, despite Yassamin's noise of protest. "Here; let us put them aside and later tonight, I'll make you a headdress you can strap it on to."

With grave sighs, Anwar gives up the candelabra and Salsabil her candles; Zahra decides to take the ones she snatched back to the storeroom Salsabil had stolen them from in the first place. 

"Now, hurry up and get dressed," Yassamin tells the children, ushering them out of the door.

"No sign of Fadl," Jaffar says from the window alcove. 

"Good," Yassamin sighs, slouching onto the windowsill, too tired to care for the meanness of her words. "Perhaps they made up."

"Perhaps," Jaffar murmurs. "Either way, Zainab is going forward with the Yule sacrifice tomorrow. She told me she's always had to do it on a small scale, half in secret, because she has been worried about Fadl's reactions. But now she's had enough, and is determined to honour her gods 'as they deserve,' no matter what--and he, naturally, isn't invited." 

"What good Muslim would wish to attend such a barbarous rite, anyhow? The very thought is enough to turn one's stomach," she says and gathers her robe closer to her chest, shuddering.

"A man in love, perhaps," Jaffar murmurs, looking past the curtain into the snowy valley. "And the tragedy of it all is, I think he still is."

***

**Meanwhile**

**Thousand Suns**

***

"Ah, Zainab, my love!" Fadl cries as he opens the front door; her grim expression tells him immediately that despite Jaffar's magic at her disposal, she cannot have found his emerald yet. This fills him with malicious glee, widening his grin ever further. "What brings me the honour of your visit, madam? Does it concern a set of prize sapphires, perhaps?" He asks, unable to resist twisting the knife a little; she always _does_ look so pretty when she is angry, her eyes so full of frozen ire.

Yet she but stands there before him in the snowy courtyard, quiet, as still as a statue, her face almost as white as the ermine lining her hood. 

"Come, come, my dear, why don't you step inside?" he says, holding the door open wide, making a sarcastic gesture of welcome with his hand. "Or is it that you have come to return me my emerald?" He asks, with a mock-astonished expression.

"No, Fadl, son of Yahya," she says, her voice firm, her eyes steady. "I have come to return to you your love."

For a few moments, Fadl fails to understand what she means. 

As he finally realises, his heart stumbles over a beat, two, three. He tries to speak, but all of his blood has rushed out of his head and his limbs; just like when a Mongol's sword had once run through him. Just like his life had flashed before his eyes, then, does their love affair now play itself out before his eyes: that first rush of infatuation when they couldn't get enough of each other; all of their fervent joys, all of their wild matings. And then, what had followed after, in increasing amounts, year after year: all of her pettinesses, all of his jealousies, their respective prides and vanities. All of their vicious arguments, all of the blows exchanged between them, blows physical and emotional; all of their violent separations. Neither of them had been an angel to the other, each one pouring out his or her worst into the cup of their love until it had become filled not with sweet wine but bitter poison. 

Yet bitterer still in the cup weigh his contributions and he knows it: all of his childish power games, all of his excessive cruelties, all of his petty humiliations, this last one of the emerald being the last drop that had finally toppled over the cup. 

She digs into her pocket and lifts out her hand: in her gloved palm lies his emerald brooch. 

Her eyes flicker back and forth, searching his. When he still doesn't speak, she clutches her hand into a fist. "It is over now, Fadl. Over once and for all," she says and raises her hand, "and for ever."

With these last words, she casts the emerald into his orchard, amidst the snow-covered orange trees. She turns to him, as if waiting for him to speak.

But how could he speak? He cannot speak. He but lowers his head in shame and surrender, he who has never surrendered to an enemy. 

_If that is your will, my lady,_ he thinks, trying to say it, but the words are strangled in his chest by a dry sob. He tries, tries again with all his might, lifts his head to say it--

But she is gone. 

He runs into the orchard, his heart pounding; he kneels where he'd seen the emerald fall, kneels there in the snow, starts to dig into it with his bare hands. He sobs and he sobs, his hands and his legs frozen and wet, but he doesn't care; finally, he recovers the brooch. It is, indeed, the very same brooch he had lost; he would recognise a forgery anywhere. 

This, this miserable little rock he had forfeited the love of his life for? This, this stupid little scratched-up stone is what he had cast away his only happiness for? This bent old brooch, he had exchanged his woman-shaped kingdom for?

He lifts his eyes and realises where he is kneeling: it is the very same tree underneath which he had lain when he had first entered this house as its master. The very same tree underneath which Zainab had first welcomed him by lying in his arms; the Zainab whose blue eyes he had gladly exchanged his rivers for, the Zainab whose golden hair he had given up his gold-coffers for, the Zainab whose steel-hearted strength he had given up his armies for. The woman who had been a hundred, a thousand times more rich and more precious a treasure to him than his kingdom ever could have been; and yet he, the fool, would let her slip through his fingers like that, only due to his own littleness? 

He squeezes the brooch in his fist until it cuts into his palm, his blood dyeing the snow red; he lets out a heaven-rending scream, keeps on screaming until his throat is raw, until he tastes blood in his mouth, until his vision goes white and he collapses at the foot of the tree. 

***

**The Blue House**

***

"There we are; that should hold it," Jaffar grins as he tightens the strap on Anwar's headdress, upon which the crystal candelabrum now sits. He feels it with its hand, tugging it a little; it holds fast. "But don't wear it for too long, or you'll get a headache."

"How do _you_ know so much about candle dancing, Father?" Salsabil asks as she screws the candles--only a few inches tall this time--tightly into the candelabrum.

"I performed it for my thirteenth birthday," he says. "And almost set the curtains on fire, and I don't wish for Anwar to make the same mistake."

Yassamin looks around the room nervously, satisfying herself of all draperies being at a suitable distance from the centre of the room. Yet, that one at the back is a little askew; she should adjust it--

\--but is pressed gently back into her seat by Zahra's firm, gentle hand upon her shoulder. "Relax."

Yassamin sighs and leans back into Zahra's warm body. "I am sorry."

"Pray, be seated, my noble patrons!" Anwar now declares from the centre of the room, his feet crossed in front of one another and his arms curved up either side of the candelabrum, so that he forms the shape of the Greek letter Psi. Behind him, the wall has been stripped of candles, so that only the ones upon his head burn bright amidst the shadows; against the left wall, sits Jaffar with the ney upon his lips, and against the right, Salsabil with the santur. 

Presently, Salsabil strikes out an elaborate flourish; upon its last notes, and as Jaffar joins in with the flute, Anwar begins a slow twirl. He loosens his joints and undulates his muscles, his entire body flowing so sinuously it's as if his bones were liquid; he glides across the floor with such incredibly short, low steps so that he seems to be floating across it, in ever-widening circles. It is a dance mesmerising, that of a dervish, drawing everyone into a mystical mood: it's as if God's hand were writing with a pen of crystal and with the ink of light, swirling calligraphy upon the blue-dyed paper of the night. 

Yassamin lies in Zahra's lap, joyous, clasping her hand; behind them, Sonbol has fallen into a state of ecstasy, trails of tears glittering in the deep lines of his face. Like wadis overflowing in the spring, each one of those lines; and he, too, is overflowing. He begins to sway back and forth in his seat, lolling his head around in circles, the hair on his arms standing on end.

Anwar spins and spins, and Jaffar and Salsabil play faster and faster; one note blends into another until there is but one shrill trill, but one single flame rising out of Anwar's head as he raises his hands and spins on one foot, spins, spins. Become column of light, he rises higher and higher with each spin, so rippling with magic that he lifts off the ground with each twirl far more than a human being ordinarily could. With a sharp cry, he signals to Jaffar and Salsabil that he has reached the peak of his dance-ecstasy, its utmost height: with this same cry, he leaps into the empty air, into the empty silence as high as he can. For but a blink of an eye, he hovers so high near the ceiling that he lights up the entire room, like a chandelier; then, as light as a feather, he drifts down slowly, extinguishing the candles one by one with his magic as he falls, finally landing upon the floor as soft as a cat, settling once again into the shape of a Psi. 

No one applauds or cheers; there is no need. Their joy, their pleasure, their appreciation, their love but ripple across the room in waves, so that no one knows whose joy is which, so has the power of Anwar's devotion opened their hearts and joined them as one: for but a few moments, the darkest of all nights has, in The Blue House, become Paradise.

So drowsy is Yassamin from her joy that she actually jumps a little when Jaffar suddenly sits beside her, offering her a steaming glass. 

"Tea?" 

"I--oh. Well, if I say 'sorry,'" she laughs, "you will only scold me for it, so I shan't. Thank you, my love." 

Only as they all say their prayers and begin to eat, does Yassamin realise just how hungry she is; she tucks into the figs and cheese with relish. Anwar and Salsabil, too, descend down to earth as they descend upon the feast, the food having turned them into ordinary children once more; both the children and the adults make sure to scrape every last bit of red watermelon flesh off the fruits as they eat them, to ensure their health for the coming year. Even Ishtiaq and Mustafa get their share tonight, instead of being banished from the human dinners the way they usually are: Mustafa laps at his chicken sauce peacefully, while Sonbol has to keep a hold on Ishtiaq's harness, so wildly does he devour his gazelle thigh. 

"I think we are past midnight," Jaffar sighs in relief after having peered at the stars through the window. "Light has won," he says and sits down next to Yassamin, taking her hand and kissing it tenderly.

"Let us hope it does so for others, too," she murmurs, squeezing his hand and leaning her head against his shoulder. She whispers a quiet prayer of gratitude for tonight having been, indeed, peaceful against all odds; that she is still here, still alive after yet another year has passed, surrounded by the people she loves, with a living body and brightened soul with which to thank God. 

"Thanks be to God," Jaffar murmurs in turn; "thanks be to God."

***

**Meanwhile**

**New Lesbos**

***

In the shrine-room of New Lesbos, as her women hold up the drugged boar, Zainab, clad in only her jewellery, raises her dagger and lets out a loud and mighty cry. 

"To Freyja!" 

"To Freyja!" The women shout in chorus.

With one swift stroke, Zainab cuts the boar's throat; the animal does not even shriek, so stunned is he. So stunned, in fact, that he does not even realise he has died until he springs to life anew, a little piglet frolicking in the Vanir's lush, ever-summern meadows. He spies a golden apple upon the grass, two, an entire field full of them, all there for him to eat his fill; squealing with joy, he sets down to munch away. 

In the shrine room, the boar's blood--full of sacred, protective, blessing power--is gathered into a cauldron and from there, painted onto Zainab's body while it's still warm; now scarlet all over, she sprinkles and anoints the women, the altar and its idols, the holy stones. The rest of the blood, the women use to paint the walls of the shrine, all of this for luck in the coming year; the boar's flesh, they boil in the cauldron and share great hornfuls of mead over it, each time toasting to the gods. 

"To new beginnings!" Zainab cries out as she toasts, over and over, with such loudness and force that it tears at her throat. "To this new year, to this new freedom, in the name of Freyja, of Thor, of Odin most high!"

She drinks and eats until she is sick, then drinks some more; for it is good luck to drink on Yule until one passes out. The fires are warm, the blood upon her skin glowing with blessing-magic, more powerful than any armour; in the soft and warm sea of her girls' bodies she falls asleep, free and with a blissful smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a doodle of Anwar's candelabrum dance, [here.](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1336536)


	9. Chapter 9

***

**The Blue House**

**The love chamber**

***

"Mmm," Jaffar mumbles, still half asleep when Yassamin's soft touch upon his eyelids stirs him into wakefulness. _What are you doing?_

_Tracing your eyelashes, and meditating upon them,_ Yassamin murmurs to his mind. _How they are so thick, so heavy that it often seems to me that it is their weight that closes your eyes, brings down the eyelids because they can no longer support their weight._

 _Perhaps,_ he chuckles. _My poetess. Whose beauty so entrances mine eyes that it pulls my eyelids wide open again!_ He thinks and flashes his eyes open; his grin, too, wide. 

Yet, despite her delightful smile, the morning sun stings his eyes and he groans, pulling his nightcap over his eyes again. "It's that blasted window of yours."

She laughs; indeed, never before has it been this light in their love-chamber in the morning. "Speak for yourself, husband," she sighs in delight and sits up, stretching her arms. "I, at least, feel far more awake, now that we have more light!"

There is a knock on the door.

Jaffar pulls up his nightcap; he blanches visibly, as does Yassamin. Everyone in this household knows that they are not to be disturbed in the love-chamber; no one would dare knock upon that door unless it was something extremely serious, a genuine emergency. So far, Salsabil has broken a bone and Zahra has had a kitchen fire without anyone having told Jaffar and Yassamin about these things until _after_ they'd emerged from their chamber; yet--

Yassamin goes to answer the door. 

It's Sonbol, his face grave.

Jaffar cannot hear the words they exchange; not over the din of rushing blood in his ears. As he kneels there, he can feel cold, invisible arms closing around him, a cold body pressing against his back, as if there were a man of ice behind him, holding him in place. About him, there is the strong, pungent scent of a rich perfume composed of oudh and musk; as he closes his eyes, his vision swims with green and he hears the sound of swords clashing, of horses neighing, of high boot-heels and spurs clicking upon tiled floors. He clutches his breastbone; his heart lurches in his chest, a chest suddenly hollow and empty. He is cold, so cold; his teeth chatter.

He opens his eyes and tries to take his hand from his chest, but cannot: the clutch is still there, another hand clasping his, squeezing it painfully. He stares and he stares, and now both Yassamin and Sonbol look at him in shock.

"Can you see him?" Jaffar croaks. 

He wants to move but cannot; so tight is he being squeezed, embraced from behind. The half-violent, half-affectionate hug of boyish horseplay; the grip of a boy stronger than him, holding him in place so that he might show his love to him, in a way not permissible to _brothers--_

Sonbol nods; his face is dark with fear. 

Yassamin reaches out her hand, wanting to--but too afraid--to step closer.

"Fadl," she whispers.

The embrace tightens, tightens so much that Jaffar's ribs creak; he cannot breathe, as if his breath were sucked from him by this apparition, this apparition not wishing to leave without him. A sob ripples through Jaffar's chest; whose sob, he does not know. The ghost clings, clings, squeezes as if Jaffar were the only thing that could anchor him into existence--

"Fadl," Yassamin says, now firmly, with the voice of a mother trying to talk sense to a child. "Please let him go," she says and steps closer; tears fall from her eyes onto her nightgown. "None of us would wish for you to leave this world," she says, shaking her head, looking at the apparition over Jaffar's shoulder. She places her hand over Jaffar's chest, over his tightly clenched hand, over Fadl's green and white ghost-hand that covers it. Gently, she squeezes the frozen, flickering ghost-fingers, even if the hand shocks her with blue sparks the moment she closes hers over it. "But if God wills it, we must obey."

 _"It wasn't meant to end like this,"_ Fadl's voice echoes in the room; thick, rasping from fever, wet from tears and with a childlike stubbornness, a little boy's refusal to accept what has happened. _"Not like this; not like this. I wanted--I wanted a battlefield, rather, or to breathe my last in her arms, but not like this--not so **alone** \--"_

And in Fadl's wide, child's eyes, a lifetime of regrets glimmers; a shudder passes through his body and he flickers, flickers--

And he is no more.

Jaffar collapses forwards onto the bed, crouching in pain, panting; Yassamin and Sonbol are there to hold him, to stroke his back, to whisper words of their shared sorrow, words of tender care. 

_They are there for me,_ Jaffar thinks. _Here I reel, surrounded by love, unlike my poor brother, my poor wayward brother, who was not given, even in his final hour, the mercy of having us by his side._ "He did not deserve this," Jaffar sobs, strings of phlegm dangling between his lips as he weeps, shakes, keens. "He deserved better than this. Why, oh _why_ did we not go to him immediately after Zainab--?"

Yassamin presses her forehead to his, kissing his hands. "I do not know what to say, so as to not hurt you further, my love. But I do know that he looked terrible; I knew he was no longer alive, the moment I saw him. He really was about to drag your soul out of you, to take you with himself into death. Had he _dared_ do that to you, my love, know that I would have followed you; I would have fought even the angels, even God Himse--"

"Hush," Jaffar says, taking Sonbol's hands as well, pressing a kiss to them, too. "When did you hear the news?"

Sonbol shakes his head. "I was watching Thousand Suns through the mirror in the shabestan, as you told me to. Suddenly, a vision of Lord Fadl's bedroom appeared, and I saw him breathe his last."

"Was there anyone with him?" Jaffar asks. 

"No. Only a blink of an eye after, one of his servants came and alerted the household."

Jaffar straightens up, his eyes suddenly flickering back and forth. "So this was but a few moments ago?"

"Yes. I rushed upstairs as soon as--"

"Then, perhaps he is still there; still hanging between life and death!" Jaffar cries. "Perhaps there is still a chance--perhaps--!"

"Jaffar!" Yassamin screams, horrified.

But Jaffar is already on his feet. He rushes to his discarded robes, picks up a piece of chalk and quickly, draws a circle on the floor. He looks up at Yassamin, holding out his hand. 

"Come, Yassamin, quickly!"

Yassamin and Sonbol share despairing glances. "Very well," she says as she gets up and takes Jaffar's hand, albeit reluctantly. "But I'm coming with you _only_ to make sure you won't do anything stupid!"

"Too late, my love!" Jaffar cries, with a madman's laugh; in a thunderclap and lightning-flash, they surge upwards as light, and are gone.

***

Jaffar and Yassamin soon regret travelling barefoot, and in but their nightshirts: the corridors of Thousand Suns are freezing cold even through the carpets and wall hangings. Just as Jaffar is about to pull back the curtain to Fadl's bedchamber, Yassamin stops him with a hand upon his wrist. 

_There are servants inside. They might panic, or become difficult upon seeing us like this._

_Well observed, my love._ Jaffar glances at the curtain, then swirls a sleeping-rune in the air with his hand; it is immediately followed by three soft thumps. _There we are._

He pulls back the curtain to reveal Fadl's grand, canopied bed upon which he lies, pale and still; gently, Jaffar and Yassamin move aside the elderly slaves who had been tending to Fadl, so that they might sit upon the bed on either side of him.

"He is still warm," Yassamin says upon clasping Fadl's right hand. 

"Then, there is still hope," Jaffar murmurs.

Yassamin is not so sure, worried that perhaps they are trying to defy God, but she keeps her silence. 

"I can feel his spirit, still, you know," Jaffar says. "Hovering there in the aether, fighting death. He lingers; he still wishes to remain. Always the stubborn bastard," he says through his tears, shaking his head. 

"If only we knew what did this to him. It cannot have been but sorrow."

"I felt him against my body, Yassamin. Felt his bitterness, felt the state he was in when he succumbed. He was feverish; it must have been the same fever that but touched me on Yalda. But give a fever to a man in his state--for it was I who must have given it to him, the day before Yalda--" his voice breaks in a sob, and he struggles to speak again. "Give a fever to a man whose heart has been broken, a man whose strength has been sapped by melancholy, a man who, in his sorrow, must not have cared for his health, and in _this_ weather..." he squeezes Fadl's hand. "You stupid bastard!" he groans. "You stupid _fucking_ bastard! I am sick and tired of rescuing your wretched arse, over and over again!"

Yassamin knows him too well to be shocked by his yelling at Fadl like this; if anything, insulting him would be the surest way to bring him back again. 

But there Fadl lies, still unmoving; it's as if something is holding Jaffar back from using magic, too. 

Yassamin, unable to bear it, holds out her hand and slams Fadl's chest with a powerful rune, to artificially start his breathing, his heart. Fadl's back arches off the bed from the force of the blow, a most horrible rattle escaping his throat; his body tenses like a bow, but soon crashes back into the bed again, just as lifeless as he was before.

"I would not waste your time if I were you," a woman's voice says from behind them. "He has left us, for good."

"Zainab!" Yassamin turns to face her image in the mirror that stands beside the door; Jaffar doesn't, as if he had been expecting for her to be watching them all along. 

"I only mean that he has just bidden me his farewells," Zainab says, her face expressionless, inscrutable. 

"But he has _not_ bidden farewell to _me!_ " Jaffar cries in despair, clasping Fadl's face. "I beg of thee, God; allow him to speak. If only to say goodbye! Or I swear, I will--"

"Don't threaten Him!" Yassamin says, grabbing Jaffar's hand and pulling it away, despite how terrified she now is of Jaffar's fury.

For in his eyes, she can now see a glimpse--no, more than a glimpse, rather the full blaze--of the madman who had, once, descended into the dark arts of necromancy to try and speak to his dead wife and children, so long ago. Jaffar the witch-king, the merciless tyrant who had ordered execution after execution, solely to gain blood and skulls for his experiments; the man who had sunk lower and lower in his madness, until he had been shunned even by the beasts. A madness only the visage of a Basran maiden in his crystal had been able to draw him out of; that maiden, today his wife, the mother of his children, now pleads for him to step back from that abyss, lest it swallow him again.

"She is right," a voice says from the canopies, from near the ceiling. "Do not drive yourself away from God's Presence."

It is the ghost of Fadl, now made peaceful by death, clearly having been allowed into that Presence, within that Grace. He hovers closer, so close that they can now see he is dressed in green silk, and is seated upon a golden couch; behind him, green meadows spread far and wide, a tree offers its shade and there is the bubbling music of fountains. In his eyes, there is no more bitterness, no more melancholy: in their stead, tears of awe and humility glimmer and glow.

Jaffar, abashed, lowers his head and presses it to the corpse's chest in submission. "Forgive me," he mumbles. "God knows best."

Fadl smiles, the signs of age now gone from his face. Gone, too, are all his battle-scars, gone is all his sorrow: he is become the beautiful young prince once more. "If God has forgiven a sinner like me, surely He must forgive you, too, brother mine," he says, tenderly reaching out and lifting Jaffar's chin with his ghostly hand, lifting up his tear-stained face and pressing a tender kiss upon his lips.

"So you are finally at peace," Yassamin murmurs, tears in her eyes. "That's all I ever wanted, brother-in-law," she says, shaking her head, "from the first day we met; to see you happy and at peace." And now, her voice breaks, her heart too full of joy, so much joy she cannot bear it. It is like the overflowing bliss she had felt that day she had given birth to the twins, she realises: her entire self filled with relief, with gratitude at witnessing the miracle of a new birth.

Fadl chuckles, shaking his head, too. "It is a little bit like that, I suppose," he says and looks around himself, amazed. "A new birth. It will take some getting used to; I'll grant you tha--"

A little hand appears, taking Fadl's; as he stares at it, astonished delight fills his eyes, too. He trembles, squeezes that little hand tenderly, breaking down in full, uninhibited tears of joy.

"Ali... Ali!"

"Come, Father," the boy says, and from behind Fadl, a woman's arms come to embrace him. "Mother; tell him to hurry up!"

But Fadl cannot stop weeping, not even as Pari kisses his tears from his face.

"God is great," Jaffar whispers, he never having stopped weeping; he is so humbled he feels as if he is going to be swallowed by the earth any moment now. "I am so sorry. So sorry to have ever defied Him. I--"

But Yassamin is there, embracing him from behind and kissing away his tears, just as Pari now kisses away Fadl's; the brothers perfectly mirrored in life and death.

"And next, you are going to tell Jaffar that it is his duty to keep on living," Zainab says, smiling.

"Something like that," Fadl says. "As you can see, I really must leave," he says and kisses Pari's hand, and ruffles Ali's head. "I have a family to look after." He turns to look at Jaffar. "Fare thee well, beloved, beloved brother mine. Live well, live long, live happy, will you?"

Jaffar wipes his eyes and laughs softly through his tears; "I shall try." Finally letting go of the corpse, the dead object that is his brother no longer, he stands up. "I would wish you the same, but it would be unnecessary, and possibly even blasphemous," he laughs, raising his hand in a gesture of farewell. "Until we meet again, beloved, beloved brother mine."

"You too, my lady," Fadl says to Yassamin, now getting up himself, with Pari beside him and little Ali upon his arm. "Give my love to the children. And apologise to Zahra for me."

"I shall," Yassamin says and blows him a kiss, then clasps her hand over her heart.

"And _you,_ my little berserker," he says to Zainab, grinning, "I forgot to thank you." He looks around himself. "For all this. For isn't this what your Valkyries do; carry your men over to the other side? Only in your case, it was more akin to a shove."

Zainab, finally, has tears in her eyes, too. "Only you would be grateful to someone for having slain you, you pompous bastard." With an approving, relieved glance, she takes in the sight of Pari; she is, indeed, so similar to Lina that they could be twin sisters. "You go and have fun, my dallying stallion; it's what you're good at."

Fadl nods at this, with a wistful smile. He takes Pari by the hand, still carrying Ali. "Goodbye, and don't forget your prayers," he says playfully. "See how it pays off?"

As Jaffar, Yassamin and Zainab all raise their hands to wave one last time, Fadl's image begins to fade. He and his family turn a pale green, melting into the green meadows that surround them; now, their outlines fade into white. Finally, the whiteness, too, dissolves, like mist.

The sun is shining brightly, illuminating the whole room with a brilliant light. The snow has melted overnight, the last patches of it fast disappearing with the sunrise. Zainab, too, has disappeared; the mirror is now but an ordinary mirror, in whose reflection stand Jaffar and Yassamin embracing, he gently clasping her head to his chest.

"God is great," Jaffar murmurs, kissing her hair. "God is great."

"Amen," Yassamin whispers against his living, beating, joyous heart.

***

THE END

***


End file.
